Italians: it is a war between traditional pizza and gourmet pizza. Then you do
Italians: it is a war between traditional pizza and gourmet pizza. Then you do

Video: Italians: it is a war between traditional pizza and gourmet pizza. Then you do

Video: Italians: it is a war between traditional pizza and gourmet pizza. Then you do
Video: Domino’s Italian Pizza VS Authentic Italian Pizza 🍕 || Primavera Pizza 🍕 2024, March
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The scoreboard of our Italian Pizza Championship shows it clearly: gourmet pizza or “ultra pizza” is a hot phenomenon. Just legitimized - ta-da! best twist of the day - from an article in the Guardian which, in order to stay in Naples, explicitly speaks of the “pizza war” between innovative heretics and traditional Taliban. Fortunately, the British newspaper misses the existence of places outside Naples such as I Tigli, Sirani and La Fucina, which are far from the idea of popular food in terms of ingredients, tasting methods and prices. Otherwise you know how he would put it down hard.

In Naples, tradition reigns, Michele and his proposal (margherita or marinara, stop) accompanied by kilometric queues are the starting point. The pizzas are classic or traditional, the most particular are the one with sausage and friarelli and the fried pizza, usually filled with ricotta, provola and cicoli.

Who are the champions of classicism, the staunch defenders of the Margherita as we know it?

It is easy to say, the Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli Association (APN), which in 2010 obtained the recognition of Neapolitan Pizza as a Guaranteed Traditional Specialty (Stg). Reading the specification (which provides for the marinara, Margherita and Margherita extra variants, the latter with Mozzarella di Bufala DOP) you will discover a few interesting things, for example that the use of mother yeast is not foreseen and the leavening is overall 6-8 hours. In Naples the mother yeast is almost unused and leavening over 24 hours is an exception and not a rule. No one would dream of adding extra virgin olive oil to the dough and light flours are used, never wholemeal, rarely type 0 and / or stone-ground.

The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) is more flexible, so much so that the Guardian places one of its recognized masters, Enzo Coccia, among the heretics, who opened the pizzaria (sic) La Notizia in 2010. The spring pizza of Coccia is topped with asparagus, buffalo mozzarella, pecorino, beans and lard, and cod, speck, figs and, in season, the white truffle of Alba appear on the menu for a pizza that can cost 25 euros or more..

Coccia declares his love for experimentation, and adds that with the crisis more and more chefs are approaching once popular foods: "People want to spend less to eat well, I know some chefs with two Michelin stars who are rushing to install ovens wood burning, while I myself am considered a chef, no longer just a pizza chef ".

But don't talk to the Orthodox about experimentation. They will reply that gourmet pizza does not exist, pizza was born as a poor food and if complicated it loses its identity.

The team of defenders of tradition counts among its ranks authentic champions. Antonio Starita: “I am against these gourmet pizzerias, a pizzeria must be fast and cheap, churning out 400 pizzas a night. I've seen USING CREAM, it can't be worse”. Salvatore Di Matteo: “Gourmet pizza is like a cold, in the sense that it will pass”. They don't want it to be called pizza, “seasoned focaccia”, “leavened disc with stuff on it”, “food in wedges”, everything in short, but not pizza.

It won't be Neapolitan but for me it's always pizza. Just like liquid nitrogen ice cream is ice cream, open ravioli is a ravioli and meat cooked at low temperature is still meat.

May they then stink for a little while in Naples … if they saw what's further north! In Bagnolo Mella in the province of Brescia, Sirani offers pizzas with marinated Sicilian red shrimp and mixed salad (€ 36), Pata Negra Joselito Gran Reserva (€ 33) or Catalan lobster with fried squid and Tropea onions (€ 34).

The most famous of the gourmet pizza chefs answers, Simone Padoan de I Tigli, with pizza with foie gras escalope in brioche bread, lard, buffalo mozzarella, pink grapefruit zest, wild herbs and toasted hazelnuts (32 €), or octopus, aubergines, tomato, broad bean pesto and Asiago (€ 29) and more oil-cooked cod, pea puree, strawberries, basil mayonnaise and coal crumbs (€ 28).

And lastly Rome, the undisputed capital of surrealism applied to leavened dough. Here the flag of pretentious pizza comes from La Fucina, Mulino Marino flours and Barlotti mozzarella. A little cheaper than the previous ones (we usually go between 15 and 20 euros), it defines classic pizzas with rainbow trout eggs, delicate artisan provolone, cream of potatoes and buffalo mozzarella (20 €) or pear and apple mustard bio”with sheep ricotta, buffalo mozzarella and Speck di Sauris (€ 18).

But even Stefano Callegari, the man behind the Sforno-00100-Tonda trinity, is certainly not watching. The cacio e pepe pizza is a brilliant masterpiece of technique and research, a Roman cornerstone together with Greenwich (Blue Stilton and Porto reduction). They are extremely tasty pizzas, even if not exactly light, which facilitates their consumption in wedges for the whole table, even if, to be honest, the rite of the baptism of Sforno would involve the consumption of a whole cheese and pepper, I, at the time, I did. And how can we forget the Christmas pizza? Each clove a day, from Christmas Eve (tuna and olive pasta), to Christmas ("pizza tortellino"), Santo Stefano (Picchiapò), the last (panettone and nougat) and the first (zampone and lentils). A provocation, especially for the sweet-salty mixes; I recently finished digesting the Christmas 2009 one.

Don't worry, Gabriele Bonci is about to be mentioned in this post too. Because speaking of psychedelia, it is necessary to remember its LSD: Licorice, Sausage and Dates. Just one example among his extraordinary and imaginative creations.

We should then think, as well as of ingredients, of dough. Rising with sourdough, stone-ground flours, wholemeal or cereals such as spelled and enkir, adding extra virgin olive oil to the dough are the results of research that was born and developed outside Campania. A research that continues on its way, without denying the masters but simply adding possibilities to the explorers of taste. After all, without the real Neapolitan pizza this new world would not even exist. Other than pizza war.

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