I often tell people that I was introduced to Pizza by
Michelangelo and Raphael. No, not the artists, the Ninja Turtles! Yes, growing
up, our ‘heroes in a half shell’ were the latest crime fighting stars and pizza
became the coolest food of the day! You won’t catch me narrating my early
encounters with pizza to the Italians though. They take their art and food very
seriously, and my statement would be nothing short of blasphemy!
But, my pizza experiences were limited largely to the Indian
subcontinent, where the food is more
commercial.
So I was looking forward to the tasting the real stuff in Italy. My first
journey took me to Naples – about 225 kms from Rome. It was a tour to Pompeii
with City Wonders (
https://citywonders.com/)
that included a hike to Mt. Vesuvius and pizza at Naples.
Naples is the home of Pizza – at least the modern version,
or so I’m told. If you think Italy’s history manifests in just stone buildings,
you are in for a surprise. Pizza has its own history and it unfolds here in
Naples.
The flatbread isn’t an Italian creation. It was consumed across
the Mediterranean and Asia in different forms and was often eaten with
different toppings. In the 1700s, Naples supported a large number of working
poor (“Lazzaroni”) who found Pizza convenient – cheap and easy to consume.
The Marinara and the Margherita are considered to be the ‘classics’.
The first, is older and is named after ‘la marinara’ or the seaman’s wife who
would prepare this food for husband when he returned from the Bay of Naples. The
second has a more interesting story. After Italy’s unification in 1861, King
Umberto I and his Queen visited Naples in 1889. The royal couple wanted to
sample the local fare which of course consisted of Pizza. But there was a
special variant that the Queen enjoyed – it resembled the Italian tri-colour
with Basil, mozzarella and tomato. This was the first Margherita pizza, named
after who else but the Queen, Margherita. The queen’s liking of a poor man’s
food probably triggered the wide adoption of the food across the country which
spilled over to other parts of the world when the Italians migrated.
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The tour takes us to a restaurant in Naples for an original ‘Napoletana’.
It’s fluffy and soft as compared to the ones in Rome which are thinner and have
a crusty edge. As I sunk my teeth into a bit of history, I couldn’t help but compare
the soft bread and the elastic mozzarella to the tandoori chicken pizza I got
back home, or worse still, some chilli paneer version of it!
Next stop was a cooking class in Rome with InRome cooking (
http://www.inromecooking.com/). Chef Max
who is from Sicily quickly tells us the difference between Roman and Neapolitan
pizza – similar to what I had heard on the tour 2 days earlier. But, we weren’t
here for tales of Pizza’s history – we had to make our own Pizza. Max quickly
gets into the method of making the perfect dough and somehow I wasn’t surprised
to learn that a key part of the process was the time you leave the dough to
rest – good things in life take time right! Longer the time, the lighter is the
base. We add the tomato sauce and the toppings, shove it into an oven for about
5 mins and out comes a Pizza!
How in the world did this become a fast food – centuries to mature
and at least a day to make!
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