Eating Italian Frittata con pomodorini secchi e mozzarella (Frittata with dry cherry tomatoes and mozzarella) Restaurant menus generally translate fritatta as omelette but this dish is authentically Italian. A recipe from 1484 describes it as made of whipped eggs, cooked in a pot with oil or butter in a round shape. Italians eat frittatas at any time of day, often at room temperature as antipasti. Chef Rick Tramonto, author of Osteria, describes omelettes and frittatas as "close cousins, based as both are on eggs cooked with aromatic cheeses, vegetables, herbs, and meats." The difference between them: "how the savory ingredients are married to the eggs." For omelettes, cooked eggs are folded over the ingredients. For frittatas, the ingredients are mixed with the raw eggs, poured into the pan, partially cooked on top of the stove and then finished in the oven or under the broiler. Frittatas are cooked as one large 'pie,' never folded and are cut into wedges—which makes them, as Tramonto puts it, more "family friendly." To create the lightest frittatas, Tramonto recommends whisking a good deal of air into the eggs just before pouring them into the pan. He also suggests his grandmother's secret: adding a pinch of baking powder to the raw egg mixture to ensure that the fritatta puffs up a little. His nonna surely would have understood my confusion when I announced one summer afternoon in Italy that I had made a frittata (ho fatto una frittata). Our guests looked concerned, if not downright anxious. Making a frittata, I learned that day, also can mean making a mess of things. Here is a recipe for a simple frittata that is anything but a mess from Osteria: Hearty Italian from Rick Tramonto's Kitchen, (Broadway Books, 2008). Frittata Recipe Ingredients (for four servings) 12 large eggs 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese 1/4 cup whole milk pinch of baking powder Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 32 oven-dried cherry tomatoes (recipe follows) 16 baby mozzarella balls, each about one half ounce, halved 4 large fresh basil leaves, washed, stems removed, torn (about 2 ounces) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl, add 3/4 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano, the milk, and the baking powder, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Using a wire whisk, beat until smooth and airy. In a 10 - 14 inch ovenproof nonstick sauté pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and pour a quarter of the eggs into the pan. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1 to 2 minutes or until they begin to scramble but are only partially cooked. Evenly distribute 8 tomato halves, 4 mozzarella balls, and a quarter of the basil over the eggs in the pan. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the frittata. Transfer the pan to the oven and let the frittata cook for 3 to 5 minutes longer, or until the eggs are set and cooked through. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the hot frittata with about a tablespoon of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Using a large, broad spatula, lift the frittata from the pan and serve. Repeat to make three more individual frittatas. Oven dried cherry tomatoes 16 cherry tomatoes about 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Set each half, cut side up, on a baking pan and drizzle with enough olive oil to coat. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Let the tomatoes "dry" in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until they are slightly softened and the edges are slightly crisp. Let the tomatoes cool and use immediately or refrigerate in an airtight container, covered with olive oil, for up to 7 days.   Touring Italian Go to the Coliseum. Don't miss the Uffizi. Pose in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Ride in a gondola. But if you'd like to venture beyond the typical tourist paths, this page will offer alternative places to explore, sites to see and new words to add to your Italian vocabulary. The Walls of Pompeii Pompeii, a thriving Roman city of about 12,000 citizens, was buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Excavations, which began after the discovery of the lost city in the eighteenth century, have yielded a fascinating glimpse of life in what seems to have been the Las Vegas of its day. No evidence exists that Christianity ever breached Pompeii's walls. In this thoroughly pagan place, pleasures—of the bedroom, the table, the theater and the sports arena—were the true religion. Yet we owe a debt to Pompeii's freewheeling citizens: They had an incorrigible urge to write on walls. The sheer zest of the words in the 15,000 graffiti and inscriptions they left behind testifies to the potency of the Roman vernacular, or volgare. "Vulgar" also applies to the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii's infamous brothels. Some satisfied customers scrawled crude testimonials to the skills of particular prostitutes; others boasted of their sexual stamina. But not all of Pompeii's writings are so explicit. In a simple red or black script with letters about six inches high, signs along the town's narrow streets endorsed political candidates, denounced deadbeats and issued no-nonsense directives, such as "If you must lean against a wall, lean against someone else's." Scrawled on the floor of a trading house were the words, "Welcome, money!" Inscriptions decorated the walls of many private residences in Pompeii. "Whoever loves, let him flourish," read one sign. "Let him perish who knows not love. Let him perish twice over whoever forbids love. "A notice in the dining room of a fashionable home asked visitors to refrain from casting lascivious looks at the serving women or making passes at the wives of other guests and, above all, to keep the conversation clean. "If you can't," the blunt last line exhorted, "please go home." You can find a list of additional graffiti here, an online resource "for all things Pompeian". To find out more about Pompeii: Butterworth, Alex and Laurence. Ray. Pompeii: The Living City. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. Nappo, Salvatre. Pompeii: A Guide to the Ancient City. Barnes and Noble Books, 1998. Ranieri Panetta, Marisa. Pompeii: The History, Life and Art of the Buried City. Vercelli, Italy: White Star, 2004.