Saltimbocca á la Romana with fresh organic pasta

In Germany every single village has it's own italian ice cream parlor. A lot of italians came in the 50s and 60s and introduced us to ice cream, pizza and pasta. And I was so lucky that ours not only had the best ice cream in a 50 kilometer radius but also a wonderful daughter named Barbara (pronounced with 2 rolling "r") who was one of my best friends back then. I remember the sleep-overs at her house when we sneaked in the cooling room in the middle of the night and found ourselves in ice cream heaven. But to that day I'm not that big of a sweet tooth. I enjoyed the ice cream - no doubt about that - but I was always more exited about what was for dinner. One evening I was introduced to "Saltimbocca á la Romana". Nino, Barbara's father, told me what Saltimbocca means. Nothing less than "jumps in the mouth". So now, imagine you are 8 years old and have a very, very vivid fantasy. I was sitting there just waiting for this piece of meat to hopp up and down in mouth like a rodeo horse. But nothing hopped...and I was very close to get extremely dissapointed, when the veal and the parma ham and the sauce melt to an savory explosion in my mouth. I still remember my face and the taste still in muy mouth as I turned around to Nino saying: "You lied to me - nothing hopped!" He started his deep laugh, looking at me saying: "But you love it, right?" Oh yes, I did!
So todays recipe is in memory of Barbara and her dad Nino !

Here's what you need!

• 4 veal cutlets (scaloppini) works with chicken too
• 4 slices of Parma ham
• 12 fresh sage leaves, plus some extremly beautiful ones for decration
• Flour for dredging
• olive oil, unsalted butter 
• Salt and fresh pepper
• a dash of white wine, I prefer Marsala cause it tastes a little extra
• chicken broth, 200 ml ca.
• lemon juice
• cane sugar 
• fresh organic pasta 

 Here's what you do!

Smack the cutlets with a meat mullet until they are nice and tender and (very important!!!) evenly thick. Put a slice of ham and a piece of plastic foil on top. Gently oll the ham onto the veal - I use a normal rolling pin. Take away the foil - lift up the ham and add 2 or three sage leaves - some put it on top but I prefer it between the ham and the veal. Try what you like best! 
When this is done you pin the sage, ham and veal together with a tooth pick. Turn the cutlets in flour (I always add a decent amount of salt and pepper to the flour so I skip salting the meat directly) and fry them in a pan. Saltimbocca is a very easy dish, where everything can go to hell very fast! Now you have to be careful. Fry the meat on the ham side only quite short, so teh veal and teh ham sort of melt together. In NO CASE you want the ham to get crispy! Then you have just a salty crispy layer on a chewy piece of meat. So be careful! Once this is done you turn it around and fry until it's slightly golden brown, take it out of the pan and keep it warm. Now you add a tiny bit of cane sugar (this is NOT in the traditional recipe, this is pure Alexa!!! So if you want to keep it to the base,m skip that). That caramelizes all those nice flavours you got from frying. But it's totally up to you. Now you add the wine (or in my case Marsala), the chicken broth and some lemon juice. Let everything reduce until you got a nice saucy consitence. Add salt and pepper to tase and add some butter to bind the sauce. Cook the pasta. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve it to your guests so it can jump straight into the mouths.