Saltimbocca alla Romana

This dish is one of the most traditional Roman dishes, and it is deeply rooted in regional cuisine. The name of this Italian classic comes from salti in bocca, meaning it jumps in the mouth, which is exactly what the flavors of saltimbocca do. The dish consists of tender, pan-fried veal cutlets that are wrapped in Italian prosciutto, flavored with fresh sage, then sautéed in white wine. Even though the original recipe for saltimbocca is supposedly centuries old, the first written trace of this dish was found in Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 cookbook La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene, in which he claims to have enjoyed this famed dish at Roman trattoria Le Venete. However, saltimbocca alla Romana is often said to have originated not in Rome, but in Brescia, a Lombardian city nestled at the foot of the Alps, where an almost identical dish dubbed saltimbocca alla Bresciana has been prepared since the early 1800s. Regardless of its true origins, saltimbocca is one of Rome’s favorite secondi piatti today, and it is usually enjoyed with a side of green vegetables such as piselli alla Romana, Roman-style green peas.