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French and Italian cuisines "have been intertwined since the young French queen-to-be Catherine de Médicis coached from Italy to France in 1533 with a retinue of chefs and their recipes, plus forks, then unknown to the Gauls. The old established Italian cuisine is still among the world's most refined, largely because it has stayed close to its rural roots. When Marcella Hazan published The Classic Italian Cook Book in 1976, it was considered the definitive opus. Her sequel, More Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf; 496 pages; $15), is as valuable as its predecessor. Scooping up irresistible formulations from palazzo, trattoria and country cottage, she makes available for the home cook another whole array of la buo-na cucina. Kazan's recipes for veal, in all its luscious Latin variations, are worth a book unto themselves. It so happens that Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey of the New York Times have produced just such a volume, Veal Cookery (Harper & Row; 229 pages; $10). No meat is more succulent than the creamy pink flesh of milk-fed calf, whether married to crabmeat, crawfish, shrimp, lobster or tuna, or stewed, stuffed, sauced, roasted or grilled, or divided into what some call the ''odd parts." such as brains, sweetbreads and soup bones. Indeed, le petit veau is a centerpiece of all the great cuisines save the Chinese. The book's most notable contribution may be a simplified recipe for côtes de veau Orloff, that unusually hard-to-prepare confection of glazed chops with pureed onions and mushrooms that was one of czarist Russia's more admirable innovations.
Another lovely legacy of old Russia is Chicken Kiev, a dish too seldom served in American homes or restaurants. Carl Jerome's The Complete Chicken (Random House; 247 pages; $12.95) should provide a rise in fare. The author, who has been a teaching and writing associate of James Beard's, ennobles the plebeian poulet in such great incarnalations as demi-deuil, en brioche and bollito misto, all sagely laid out. Jerome also offers some offbeat recipes for Southern fried chicken that will stir sizzling debate in Dixie.
That same delicacy is prescribed in The Time-Life American Regional Cookbook (Little, Brown; 527 pages; $12.95). Compiled by the editors of the most authoritative cookbook series ever assembled, this savvy potpourri ranges with wit and spice from Eastern Heartland chow to the Creole cuisine of New Orleans, from the Tex-Mex chilis of the Southwest to the fish and game specialties of the Northwest.