The wild pizzas of southern Italy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/the-wild-pizzas-of-southern-italy-have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed

by diego_moita • 5 years ago

90 79 5 years ago

mrlonglong4• 5 years ago

After seeing the rather click-baity title, I've now got visions of seeing wild pizzas roaming the plains of Italy waiting to be plucked.

peanut_worm• 5 years ago

I don’t think that qualifies as click bait lol

klyrs4• 5 years ago

A sufficiently pedantic reading of any headline will reveal that it does not capture the nuance writ plain in the linked article.

(except when the title is the full contents of a solitary linked tweet)

blakesterz• 5 years ago

That headline reminded me of the old BBC prank:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

The spaghetti tree hoax is a famous 3-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current affairs programme Panorama. It told a tale of a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the fictitious spaghetti tree, broadcast at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Britons were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made from wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned into the BBC, either to say the story was not true, or wondering about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."

Or the Pizza Farm from Funny or Die!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0weSjPKi4cs

KineticLensman• 5 years ago

The Guardian had a similar April fool about the island of San Serriffe [0], “a small archipelago, its main islands grouped roughly in the shape of a semicolon, in the Indian Ocean”, which was apparently celebrating 10 years of independence.

But coming back to roaming Pizzas. Another anecdotal food myth (in the UK) is the haggis that roam the Scottish highlands. They allegedly have shorter legs on one side so that it is easer to go round and round the hills.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/gnmeducationcentre/archive-educa...

dspillett3• 5 years ago

Or the episode of the original Dangermouse where herds of bagpipe were stolen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln4JOPb20l0

legerdemain• 5 years ago

Do not feed the house hippo: https://youtu.be/NBfi8OEz0rA

fanf2• 5 years ago

There are even restaurants called “Spaghetti Tree” named after this ancient joke

jaclaz5• 5 years ago

And they are not anyway pizzas (unless you stretch the definition of pizza to "anything that has a layer of bread at the bottom").

Not so casually the only actual pizza in the list is the one that is called pizza (pizza al taglio[1]) all the others are different specialities that may (or may not) be overall similar to a pizza.

In Italy there are tens or hundreds of regional variations of "focaccie" (that are not pizza) or similar "bread with something", the traditional diets all revolve around bread or pasta (i.e. flour+water), (olive) oil, vegetables and cheese, i.e. the most economical ingredients, more or less always the same and people had centuries to invent variations on the same theme.

[1] which is common enough, literally "pizza for cut", it is actually a "normal" pizza cooked in largish rectangular pans that is sold in rectangular slices.

detritus2• 5 years ago

Dunno - my Italian partner refers to fresh thick focaccia when we're in Italy as 'pizza', so I think there's a little missing from the translation into English.

Suffice to say, I think Italians have a wee bit more of a right to define the word than I do.

occamrazor• 5 years ago

In some parts of central Italy, including Rome, the soft focaccia is called _pizza bianca_ (white pizza) and it’s eaten as-is or sliced in half and filled with charcuterie, typically mortadella.

Source: am Italian too.

bpierre• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/k5rfX

morpheos1372• 5 years ago

the most incredible thing to me about Italian cruisine is the fact that the tomato is not even native to Italy.

progre• 5 years ago

Tomatoes have been grown in Italy since at least 1550, plenty of time to be firmly accepted in the food culture.

Edit: Come to think about it, tomatoes in Italy have existed longer than Italy itself.

dspillett3• 5 years ago

They'll be claiming fish & chips isn't an English dish next!

kazen442• 5 years ago

by about 400 years at that!. (if we take into concept the first foundation of the italian state, and not its predecessors. A common heritage of the italian peninsula is ofcourse far, far older).

lastofthemojito3• 5 years ago

I think about that anytime someone says something like "American food is so unoriginal, everything good there is stolen from immigrants" ... well sure, we're all ancestrally from somewhere else, and we brought lots of food traditions with us ... why do people say that like it's an insult? But really the same goes for the whole world on a long enough time scale. Heck, Italy wasn't even a thing when the Medicis were enjoying their imported tomatoes.

giomasce• 5 years ago

This.

No tradition or culture can claim to be purely from one place. Everything has mixed in the world by now. All of us are immigrants.

goodpoint3• 5 years ago

It's about giving credit where credit is due.

Failing to do so often and on an industrial scale quickly becomes cultural appropriation.

In HN terms: it's like systematically violating FOSS licenses that require attribution.

Also, about not butchering something and/or making false claims its originality.

kazen442• 5 years ago

most dishes in europe would be plain boring without the columbian exchange. except for bread and fish/meat, you have very little staple foods left. Mainly beets and variants of it. Potatoes are another great example. Being the staple food for most people since atleast the 1700's.

AutumnCurtain• 5 years ago

Durum wheat was likewise introduced to Italy in the 9th or 10th century AD, if I recall correctly as a consequence of the Muslim conquest of Sicily. Interesting to think that those iconic elements of their modern cuisine were introduced "recently" in the historical sense.

collaborative• 5 years ago

Lots of other European countries also radically changed their diets, some as recently as 300 years ago

55555• 5 years ago

Yup, really interesting. Chile's aren't native to India or Thailand either.

julienchastang2• 5 years ago

There are many examples of that. Hungarian paprika made of peppers that are originally from the Americas. Same for Indian cuisine. Read The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby

My understanding is that pizza maybe originally from Italy, but it was popularized in the US by Italian-Americans. When American tourists started traveling in Europe in large numbers, they wanted "authentic" pizza, so Italians obliged by serving them a reinvented pizza.

diego_moita• 5 years ago

but it was popularized in the US by Italian-Americans.

Sweden and Southern Germany had pizzerias before WWII. Same for São Paulo (Brazil) and Buenos Aires (Argentina), both cities with a big Italian immigration on the 19th century.

The town of Nice, in southern France, has pissaladiere as a local dish since the end of 19th century.

And then there are the hundreds of different versions of flat-breads from Asia to North Africa.

scheme271• 5 years ago

Isn't that true of a lot of old world cuisines? Potatoes, tomatoes, and chiles are native to the Americas so a lot of it didn't get introduced to Europe and Asia until the 1600/1700s.

klyrs4• 5 years ago

Nor potatoes (gnocchi), corn (polenta), zucchini, prickly pear, peppers...

I think peppers are the one that blows my mind the most. They're centered in quite a few food cultures, and I got quite far into life not realizing how relatively new that phenomenon is.

detritus2• 5 years ago

Aye, chillies and peppers generally are the one that blows my tiny little mind - to think of all the cultures, spanning right around the world, almost back to the Americas again - whose cuisine relies so much on those delicious things.

analog31• 5 years ago

Nor pasta. So what did Italians actually eat? I've always wondered.

bouk• 5 years ago

Basically none of the vegetables we eat are 'native' but have been bred for centuries to be what they are today

timeon• 5 years ago

Interesting thing is that is quite big range of foods. Otherwise it is quite common to have just one 'national dish' that is originated elsewhere (like Hungarian Goulash) or use relatively new ingredients (like potatoes in Slovak Halusky).

Oarch• 5 years ago

Reading this while happening to be on vacation in Calabria... I accept this quest!

contingencies• 5 years ago

Food blog please!

greenonions2• 5 years ago

These sound great but are quite tame in terms of pizza.

South Korea takes the idea of pizza into downright absurdity. Imagine corn, squid, blueberry, garlic, sweet potato, and mayonnaise on a single pie together.

HanaShiratori• 5 years ago

Korean Pizza is great! I like that they don't shy away from experimenting with food in general

mrtksn• 5 years ago

I recall reading the definition of the Italian Cuisine as "Cooking with whatever you have at hand" somewhere. Their stuff is good because they use top quality ingredients, it's not about some weird trick or ancient technique.

They take pride in producing and obtaining the good quality ingredients and I see Italians conservatively sticking to the basics.

On the other hand, in other countries where the produce quality is not exactly on the level of the ones in Italy, they tend to experiment with different techniques or ingredients. I would say that often the succeed in coming up with good combinations.

greenonions2• 5 years ago

This seems pretty accurate; the quality of the flour, tomatoes, and other ingredients just can't match up in Korea.

There are some Korean dishes which do rely on ingredients and simplicity, thinking of a dish like mulhwae, but pizza is kind of a novelty. And if it's going to be a novelty, it might as well be a bit of a spectacal.

Personally, I love exploring both sides!

PartiallyTyped• 5 years ago

To say that technique isn't part of what makes Italian cuisine good is a bit inane, many pasta dishes are just plain bad without good technique, e.g. spaghetti aglio e olio becomes an oily mess, the cheese in caccio e peppe breaks, the eggs break in carbonara.

mixmastamyk• 5 years ago

Would rather not. However, KBBQ with banchan is another favorite meal.

handrous5• 5 years ago

There’s no tomato sauce atop the dough, no mozzarella, no onion. It’s just crushed tomato with salt, oregano, and olive oil.

Looks at picture to make sure he's not misunderstanding, sees that, no, it's that

What does the author think pizza sauce usually is?

shepherdjerred• 5 years ago

the separate ingredients are quite different from them as a sauce. you'd never call a bowl of flour, water, salt, and yeast "pizza dough".

handrous5• 5 years ago

Well, 1) that sure looks like a tomato sauce on top of that bread, and 2) all you do to turn crushed tomato + salt + oregano into pizza sauce is stir slightly.

[EDIT] I'm not trying to be a dick about this, I was just really surprised to read that description, coupled with the photo above it. "no tomato sauce" goes on to describe its toppings as exactly what one might mix to get a pizza sauce

p4bl0• 5 years ago

Yes because it's missing olive oil ^^.

skrtskrt3• 5 years ago

Everyone here is trying to be way too literal to "gotcha" about what sauce is.

I am Italian, and you need to define these things way more off feel and appearance than some scientific definition of "sauce" that you just made up.

Regardless of whether "pizza sauce" is cooked or not, you look at and you know it's sauce. It's near-puree consistency, with all the ingredients having been blended together, you could spread it easily with a spoon.

Look at that picture, those are clearly crushed tomatoes that were very recently a full tomato, not like a canned "crushed tomato" you would get in a store that's already like 95% of the way to sauce consistency. You could not spread those around evenly or easily with a spoon. It's not a sauce. It's crushed tomatoes, with salt, oregano, and olive oil.

If you want to "gotcha" go with the fact that the vast majority of these would not be called "pizzas" by anyone in Italy - as mentioned by @elrond89. Again by feel - you look at a big piece of woven/folded bread with some other ingredients - does it feel like pizza to you? Probably not. Most of those would be called "focaccias" or similar.

handrous5• 5 years ago

Looks similar to a standard, default-toppings New Haven style pizza, to me, which also features a coarse-crushed-tomato sauce and not much else. In either case I think you point at one and tell the average person on the street—especially among an English-speaking audience, as I suppose this article is aimed at—"look, this pizza has no sauce" and they'll look at you funny and think you're playing some kind of joke on them, because it sure looks like it only has sauce. Listing the ingredients the way the article does just makes that seem to be even more true, since it's practically a recipe for pizza sauce.

mvidal01• 5 years ago

Ugly Delicious covers this subject pretty well. https://www.netflix.com/title/80170368

elrond89• 5 years ago

Italian here. Of those in the pictures only a couple are really considered pizza by us.

Pizza must always be a dough with a raised border and something on top. Also we really care about how you cook it. Real good pizza is only cooked in a brick oven with timber, everything else is good but not real pizza (is usually lower quality)

rst• 5 years ago

So, what this seems to prove is that "pizza" really is Italian for "pie", and the particular Neapolitan kind that goes by that name in English is just one of many.

albertopv• 5 years ago

Italian here, pizza is not italian for pie, no way.

peoplefromibiza• 5 years ago

In other news: bloomberg don't understand Italian pizza.

Anyway most of them are "focaccia" we use pizza to mean a lot of different things, it also means "slap in the face" in roman slang, so don't take everything literally, sometimes pizza means the same thing americans are used to, the only difference, except maybe raw materials, is that we make them of the correct size (enough to feed only one person), sometimes it's not, it's simply "pizza shaped"

We also use the same Italian word used for cake to mean this, it's obviously not a cake (anglophones call them pies) and you can call it pizza as well (stuffed pizza to be precise)

https://www.tavolartegusto.it/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/...

they are simply baked in a cake pan

The wild pizzas of southern Italy

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