Click the pictures to enlarge

or years La Pentola dell'Oro has been offering Florence - an international crossroads of art, culture, and tourism - distinctive critical reinterpretations of the great Florentine-Tuscan culinary tradition. But this time the aim is to go one step further and produce a dish that will amaze the "disenchanted" Doctor Lecter with its extraordinary likeness to his (rather horrible!) culinary fantasies.
The dish is part of popular folklore rooted in ancient ritual sacrifices - bloody, cruel, and pitiless - the robust vigor of which is an integral part of the Tuscan being.
In the 19th century, Pellegrino Artusi defined it as a "… a tasty dish …. but… not to be offered to outsiders".
It has never caught the popular imagination, which for centuries has associated it with the "cannibalesque" episode in the Tuscan collective imagination (the story of Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggeri recounted by Dante in The Divine Comedy), and indeed this dish is sometimes named after these characters on the menus of trattorias in the Pisa area.

Serves 4:
· Heads of 4 lambs, ready for cooking (with fur and skin removed, the heads cut in half lengthwise, and 4 of the halves with the eyes removed - it is a good idea to get the butcher to do this)
· 4-5 gloves of garlic, finely chopped together with some parsley leaves, the leaves of 4-5 sprigs of marjoram, and the leaves of 2-3 stalks of mint
· 1 glass of dry vin santo
· 1 litre of delicately-flavoured meat broth, with added parsley and thyme
· 400 grams of ripe tomatoes
· 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
· 40 grams of butter
· 5-6 tablespoons of Extravirgin Tuscan olive oil
· Salt and pepper

Buy the heads from a butcher who can guarantee they are Tuscan milk lambs, which will have a delicate flavour and won't taste of a farm shed.
Two hours before starting to cook, put all 8 half-heads in an appropriate recipient with the cut edges upwards. Barely cover them with water and allow the water to continue running gently to remove all traces of blood and to eliminate the flavour of impurities from the cut bones.
When this process is complete, take a wide deepish pan, add the butter, oil, chopped garlic and herbs, and cook gently on a medium-low flame for 4-5 minutes, stirring continually.
Remove the heads from the water and dry well, handling them carefully so the brain and tongue do not slip out of their natural positions. Flour them lightly, salt and pepper them a little all over, and place them on top of the lightly-cooked garlic and herbs with the uncut part (i.e., the part of the eye) downwards. Brown them very slowly for 15 minutes, scraping away anything that sticks to the bottom and wetting them frequently with the broth so it doesn't get too dry. Then, again taking care not to disturb the brains and tongues, turn them over and repeat the same process for a further 15 minutes.
Next, remove the heads from the pan, drain carefully, and put them to one side to keep warm. Add the vin santo and a ladle of broth to what remains in the pan, turn up the flame, and thoroughly scrape the bottom and sides. Stirring constantly, cook for 4-5 minutes, allowing the wine to evaporate and the sauce to diminish in volume.
Remove from the flame, pour the sauce into a blender, add the tomatoes and puree, and blend well till the mixture is homogenised, then return it to the pan.
Arrange and allign the heads carefully eye-downwards on top of the mixture, adjust the heat so the contents are just simmering, cover, and leave to simmer for 20-25 minutes. It's a good idea to shake the pan frequently so the contents don't stick (and add more broth if they get too dry).
When they are cooked, taste and adjust for salt, turn off the heat, take 4 piping hot plates, quickly lay the table so as to recreate the congenial phatos of an intimate dinner with Lecter-Starling and … Krendler: put 3-4 spoons of sauce on each plate, then place a half head (the one with the eye removed) on each plate so the convex part is facedown (and the brain is in full view); then put the other halves eye-upwards so they are lying alongside the other ones in such a way that the eye of the lamb (Krendler) gives the impression of looking at the open cranium.
Pepper generously and place immediately on the table with a side dish of cress and valerian salad dressed with oil and lemon.
Accompany with Starling's favourite white wine: well-chilled Burgundy.
To remain in keeping with the character in the book, one should only eat the brain, extracted directly from the cranium, but this would be a pity and an unpardonable waste. Because, as Artusi notes, the tastiest part is the bit around the eye!