Stinco di Maiale allo Speck (Italian South Tyrolean Pork Shank with Speck) This is the pork shank as it is cooked in Alto Adige, where the meat is studded and wrapped with speck before it meets the oven. Speck is neither prosciutto nor bacon. It is boned pork leg, lightly salted, rubbed with juniper, bay, pepper and garlic, cold smoked over beech at a temperature that never cooks it, then matured for months in mountain air. What it gives the shank comes from that double treat

Carne Salada con Fagioli (Italian Trentino Cured Beef with Beans) Carne salada is the dish that tells you where you are. Cross the Brenner and it does not exist. Drop south of Verona and it does not exist. It lives in a narrow strip of Trentino along the lower Sarca river, around Arco and Riva del Garda, where the lake softens the winters and the mountains start at the shoreline. A lean cut of beef is buried in salt and mountain aromatics for ten days in a cold room, then eat

Tortel di Patate (Italian Trentino Crispy Potato Cake) The tortel di patate is not a potato cake in the way the rest of Europe understands one. There is no boiling, no mashing, no egg binding it together. Raw potatoes are grated, wrung out hard by hand, dressed with a little flour and salt, and dropped straight into hot fat. What comes out three minutes later is a thin lacy disc, golden and shattering at the rim, soft and faintly sweet in the middle. It belongs to the Val di