THE BEST KNOWN FOOD IN THE WORLD?

Now, which city in the world do you suppose has the most pizzerie? Naples? No. Rome? No. New York? Wrong again. The answer, surprisingly, is São Paulo. The writer of the article [unavailable online] in which I read this, in yesterday’s Giornale di Sicilia, was obviously aghast at innovations such as selling pizza by the metre and covering it with exotic fruits. Yet it was probably, originally, a sweet tart or pie, containing almonds. Personally, I think the sweet fillings, or a mixture of sweet and savoury, can work well where care is taken, as it was here.

The word pizzeria did not enter an Italian dictionary until 1918 and the etymology of the word pizza itself is unclear; it is probably related to Greek pitta and Turkish pide, denoting flat breads, yet my Italian etymological dictionary suggests that the origin is Germanic [and there's more on that here]. Focaccia is an earlier word for in some nineteenth century texts pizza is described as “a kind of focaccia”.



Just when our ancestors in many cultures began to put toppings on to flat breads is not known, but Elizabeth David, in French Provincial Cooking, wonders whether French pissaladière, which has an onion topping and which might have been brought to France by Roman chefs, is the antecedent of Italian pizza as we know it today. If her supposition is correct it would mean that something akin to the pizza we can all recognise was known in Italy before the introduction of the tomato into this country.


Most of you probably know the story of how the most well known and mildly flavoured type of pizza, the Margherita, got its name: in 1889 Queen Margherita accompanied her husband, King Umberto, on a trip to Naples. She wanted to try pizza and a pizza chef was called. He made 3 types of pizza and the Queen preferred the simplest, with its topping of mozzarella, tomatoes and basil leaves. Thus, we are told, the pizza Margherita was born.

Universal love of the pizza is a relatively recent phenomenon, even in Italy, for in the nineteenth century, because of the squalor in Naples, the city of its origin, it was thought to be an unhygienic food. It was when Italian American celebrities made their love of pizza known in the 1950s that their fans became curious about it and began to demand it too. And where America led, the world followed!

Traditional Modican pizza has a soft, rather than crispy base and I decided to knock one up today, to a recipe given to me by my friend Gina. [ I like this recipe because it involves a lot of slapping, throwing around and stretching of the dough - very therapeutic]:

250 gr 00 flour or strong white bread flour
half a cube of fresh yeast, crumbled, or a sachet of easy-blend yeast
coarse sea salt
warm water
400 gr can chopped tomatoes, with juice
dried oregano
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
chopped basil leaves
250 gr mozzarella, sliced fairly thickly
a little grated caciocavallo or pecorino cheese
extra virgin olive oil

Mix the flour, crumbled yeast cube or sachet of yeast and some salt together with enough warm water to make a soft, springy dough. I use a processor and it takes about 3 seconds but you can mix it in a bowl by hand if you want. Then knead it hard – slap it against the sides of the bowl. [Do this even if you have mixed it in a processor.] Leave to double in size in an oiled bowl covered with a clean, damp tea towel.
Meanwhile, mix together the tomatoes, garlic, oregano and basil. Add some salt.
Cover a baking tray or sheet with baking parchment and oil it.
When the dough has risen, heat the oven to 200 C.
Chuck the dough onto the oiled baking parchment and stretch it out as best you can into an oblong shape. [I love this bit as it’s messy.] Pat it out with the heel of your hand, dipping your hand in the tomato mixture so that it doesn’t stick to the dough.
Cover the dough with the mozzarella slices.
Spoon the tomato mixture over and sprinkle on the grated cheese. Drizzle some olive oil all over the pizza.
Put it in the oven and cook for 45 minutes. NB: the oven MUST be really hot before you put it in.

I used to teach basic Italian to a class of 17-year-olds with both educational and physical special needs. In the very first lesson I suggested to them that they probably already knew a lot of Italian words and asked them to think about food. Of course everyone shouted out, “I like pizza!” and a carer who was in the room with me, a girl of about 19, piped up: “Oh, yes, and they’re easy, too. You just take them out of the freezer and microwave them.” I kept my mouth shut.