Pizza Galore

Last Sunday was Family Pizza Day. We do these to take a break from the sacred Sunday braai. Other than a good-sized oven, you need very little to make pizza.

I got up early Sunday morning to start preparations for lunch. There was quite a bit to do.

Make tomato sauce. Prepare the dough. Pick the herbs. Grate the cheese. Cut and prep meat toppings. Organise everything into containers and secure with plastic wrap to prevent drying out. Build a wood fire in the oven.

Chill the wine.

Wait for the guests to arrive. Get bored and play with the dogs a little.

I may be wrong – in which case, please forgive me – but I am sure that with hamburgers, Russians and fried chicken, pizza may be our nation’s favourite (fast) food.

In that, we are not unlike a large part of the modern world.

Pizza has global charm and it seems to be growing every day. I watched with great interest as family members selected their toppings.

Without a doubt at least some of the charm of pizza can be explained by its accessibility and user-friendliness. Everyone can design his or her pizza, for almost nowhere outside Italy are there fixed rules as to what can and can’t be used to top a pizza.

It is not that the Italians invented pizza. There is plenty of archeological evidence that early people made and ate flatbreads with stuffing or toppings in several locations around the world dating as far back as the Neolithic age. Italy was one of them but by no means the only one.

Neolithic man had access to grains such as einkorn, wheat, millet and spelt, all of which were probably used to make flour for bread including flatbreads.

One major Italian invention for modern pizza is the addition of tomatoes with a sauce-like consistency in the 16th century after tomatoes were brought to Europe from the New World.

The city of Naples is regarded as the birthplace of modern pizza as we know it. Here, slices of pizza were sold as takeaway foods for poor people since the 18th century. Like so many other classic dishes, pizza was initially considered poor man’s food – bread dough with tomato and leftover bits and pieces; none of the opulence that goes on top of many contemporary pizzas.

Here in Namibia, pizzerias offer many forms of meat-delux pizzas; a true ‘m*er by’ approach to pizza-making. Pizzas with five or six toppings (other than cheese and tomato sauce) are not uncommon and quite popular if my observations are indeed correct (why else would there be so many of these on local menus?).

But the addition of meat to pizzas is likely a more recent invention that coincides with adoption of pizza as a middle-class dish.

Namibians like meat, which is why we have meat-heavy pizzas, which is a long cry from the two Italian classics – the marinara (tomato, oregano, garlic and olive oil) and margherita (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil) – which contain no meat at all. And that maybe anther reason pizza became a global dish. Nations can add their own unique flavour profiles to create something familiar and comforting. Pizza can now be Hawaiian, Mexican, Greek, Namibian or whatever. It does not need to be Italian.

That right there, in my view, is both its strength and its weakness. Some things do and some don’t belong on a pizza, I do not care what your national flavours are. But that, I may add, is personal, and making pizza is an expression of individual rights and liberties, or at least this is what I observed this past Sunday.

Once it has left Italy and travelled abroad, pizza has left behind its template – for better or worse.

The deal with the family is: I supply the dough and the tomato sauce, and you bring the toppings. Which sounds simple enough but negotiating with three teenagers takes courage and determination at a level well beyond what I possess.

We are getting good at this. We make one pizza at a time and everyone shares with everyone else. Once we tasted and discussed the flavours to reach a family-verdict, someone else gets to nominate the next collection of toppings and the process repeats itself until we had out fill, or we run out of dough or toppings or both.

This Sunday we added a variety of wines to pair with the pizzas, which I strongly recommend you do too. Pizza is a food made for wine. Period.

I had some dough and sauce left from last Sunday. I also have some headcheese (brawn) that I made from the pig’s head harvested during this winter’s great meat fest.

Perfect for pizza alla coppa di testa.

So on this pleasant morning, I am going to light the wood-fired oven once more and make myself a simple pizza for lunch, just like the Italians like it. And if you decide to save time and buy the dough and coppa di testa, I would not mind, and neither should you.

• 1 eggplant, small and firm

• 8 – 10 thin slices of coppa di testa

(brawn/headcheese)

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