I know I can do online research but I am looking for something very authentic…..maybe the kind that only someone living in Italy or that has a lot of experience with Italian cooking would know. Thanks so much!

Mia Nona came from Italy. Sicily precisely. This is one big tradition there:

Sicilian Grilled Meatballs, or Polpettine alla Griglia: One usually thinks of meatballs going into a sauce of some kind, or being fried to golden perfection. However, Sicilians also grill them, and very fine eating it is, too.

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) boned veal or pork, ground.
5 ounces (125 g) pecorino Siciliano (if possible the variety with pepper corns in it, if not a mild Romano), freshly gra
1 cup bread crumbs, moistened in milk and then squeezed dry
3 eggs
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt & pepper
Organically grown lemon or orange leaves, lightly oiled
Wooden toothpicks

Combine all the ingredients except the leaves in a bowl and mix well. Roll the meat mixture into balls a little smaller than a ping pong ball, flatten them slightly, wrap a leaf around each, and hold the leaf in place by sticking it with a toothpick. When you have finished making your meatballs, grill them to taste.

And my favorite dessert:

Ricotta Crostata – Ricotta Pie
Pastry
Ingredients

150 grams butter
30 grams icing sugar
100 grams flour
grated rind of one lemon

Method

Leave butter out to soften (overnight in winter or a few hours in summer) so it can be worked easily into the flour.

Put flour onto board and grate the rind into the flour. Mix the flour, icing sugar, grate in rind and then work in the softened butter The dough will be very short and crumbly. You do not get a smooth fine dough, it is a biscuit texture which is then sprinkled into the pan and pressed down and around the sides.

Use spring form pan, 25 cm, well greased. Press well into the pan and take it half way up. Make sure the sides and the base of the pan are well covered so there is no leakage..

Do not pre-cook the pastry.

Filling
Ingredients

1 1/2 kg ricotta
Icing sugar
3 eggs seperated
sugar
milk
80 grams candied fruit diced (mixed fig, apricot,, citrus, mandarin/orange)
50 grams toasted almonds, chopped

Method

Make pastry cream as per strudel method.

Combine ricotta with icing sugar, pastry cream, candied fruit (candita) , almonds (Some people also add a yolk but the pastry cream in enough)

Beat egg whites stiffly in a bowl which has first been wiped with a tiny bit of lemon juice and then dried.. This stops the white seperating and helps make them stiff.

When stiff fold through the ricotta mixture. If your eggs are big you may find that you don’t need to use all the egg white.

Set oven at 250 degree C

Spoon ricotta mixture into crostada and gently spread out. Don’t put up too high, keep within the pastry

This can be done in a tart form but then the taste is different. In the high pan it’s more filling to crust which is the way the pie should be.

Try to get hold of a copy of "Food: A History", by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (ISBN 0-330-49144-X).

It’s written in English and out of all the food history books I’ve read it is the most academic, well-researched and fascinating.

It will shatter many of the myths about food, including Italian food, which other books still continue to spout, such as the myth that suggests Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy as a result of his travels in China.

Preferably in the U.S. but also could be in Italy.

We are nearby Florence Italy
Please look at our site :
tuscany-cooking-class.com
cooking classes in Tuscany ,lots of information, recipes and
anything you need to know about pasta and pizza we can certanly tell you ,we have weekly and daily classes