<span style="color:#323232;">Aeneas and his chiefs,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">with fair Iulus, under spreading boughs
</span><span style="color:#323232;">of one great tree made resting-place, and set
</span><span style="color:#323232;">the banquet on. Thin loaves of altar-bread
</span><span style="color:#323232;">along the sward to bear their meats were laid
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(such was the will of Jove), and wilding fruits
</span><span style="color:#323232;">rose heaping high, with Ceres' gift below.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Soon, all things else devoured, their hunger turned
</span><span style="color:#323232;">to taste the scanty bread, which they attacked
</span><span style="color:#323232;">with tooth and nail audacious, and consumed
</span><span style="color:#323232;">both round and square of that predestined leaven.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">“Look, how we eat our tables even!” cried
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Iulus, in a jest.
</span>
This is from a translation of the Aeneid, published in 19 BCE.
That’s why I mentioned pizza bianca / white pizza - it doesn’t include passata or tomato sauce, but it’s still pizza.
Cheese being added to the pizza is a bit trickier, but I’m tempted to say that the Romans already did this; they were big fans of cheese, and the white stuff in the afresco looks a lot like sheep cheese for me. And, well, cheese melting over hot bread is kind of obvious. Plus there are claims that mozzarella itself backtracks to those times, although it was originally made with sheep milk.
I could also picture them spreading some moretum (crushed cheese with herbs and olive oil, it’s rather tasty) over the dough. The white thing in the afresco is certainly not moretum as the later is green, but frankly that doesn’t sound too far from what I’ve seen people adding to pizza bianca.
A fruit native to Brazil. We call it "pizza hawaii" in the Netherlands and it's tasty. Ananas, ham and cheese, perfection I say, pizza puritan snobs be damned.
I’m not too sure if pineapples are native from the lands currently controlled by Brazil, Paraguay, or both. The Amerindians farmed them quite a bit, so they spread even to to a chunk of North America; and the native range of a relative hints me that the genus originated further west.
That’s just a guess though - the point is that nobody knows for sure.
Modern tomato sauce used in pizza is a variation of the sauce in southern Italy. People were cultivating tomatoes there after they were introduced by Spain, that controlled both that region and the North American lands formerly controlled by the Aztec city-States (nowadays by Mexico).
Where are tomatoes from? South America. Yup. The lands are today Peru’s and/or Ecuador’s. Likely domesticated way before Cuzco/Inca expanded over the region. In the meantime, the pineapples being put over the pizza are from another region, the Paraná basin (currently controlled by Brazil and Paraguay).
Then you got the dough. Wheat was domesticated somewhere in the Fertile Crescent; I think that the lands currently controlled by Iraq should be a safe bet. In special, Eastern Rome (aka Byzantium) used to control Naples too, spreading πίτα/pita (a type of flat bread) again into the region. (I say “again” because the Aeneid already talks about pizza, in Republican times.)
Cows (for the cheese) were domesticated a bit further to the west, probably what’s today controlled by Syria… well, at least one of the times, because you can almost hear haunting zebu moos from what’s controlled now by Pakistan. (I believe that most domestic breeds should be a cross between both, with varied amounts of zebu x taurus. And perhaps a third stock from the Maghreb.)
I was once in a Filipino grocery in L.A. and they had corn and cheese ice cream. I don’t mean they had corn ice cream and they had cheese ice cream, I mean they had an ice cream flavor called “corn and cheese.”
Filipino here, grew up with the stuff and never realized how weird it could be perceived as until now. It’s more like a cheesy vanilla flavor with bits of corn.
We also have a creamy vanilla sort of popsicle with red mung beans in it that I suspect we got from the Chinese.
That is seriously not helping lol. I will concede though that it could be one of those things better tasting than you would imagine. Like the first time I tried the off the cob version of elote (Mexican Street corn.) A cup of hot corn with mayo, cheese, and chili powder? I thought it sounded bizarre at the time but holy shit - I ate the hell out of it and wanted more lol.
Combining different tastes and textures is a huge thing in Filipino cuisine. In the ice cream, the sweetness of the ice cream and corn is complemented (and arguably enhanced) by the saltiness of the cheese. The corn also provides a little crunch. I think it’s that same combo in elote that makes it so good.
One of my favorite snacks from my childhood that I still enjoy to this day is green mango with bagoong (fermented shrimp paste). The green mango is crunchy and sour while the bagoong is salty with a good dose of umami.
Honesty that’d probably be better. Ham is so bland on pizza; it can’t compete with the sauce. I always do pineapple and pepperoni. The spice from the pepperoni cuts through the sweetness really nicely.
I go to Italy often just to eat real Italian food. I understand that for Italians, the hawainana pizza is an aberration, like many other things if not cooked as they traditionally do. And I respect it, because it’s a key part of their culture. Still, I have a right to eat and like whatever I want, so I also expect respect on that sense. Some people will do this and some others won’t. I think it’s a personal choice to decide respecting others opinions.
I get that shit ALL the time. I have 34 wing flavours, a number of them address the sweet n savoury/sour thing I personally detest. I don’t carry the disgusting bulk sweet n sour sugar sauce common to this region and continually get people staring at the 34 flavours and and ask “do you have honey mustard or sweet n sour”? No. I don’t. That’s not what I’m doing here, if I had that, it would be listed. Literally every other place has that, I’m fucking trying to impart some taste to the region no matter how miniscule.
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Just think, if you open your mind and let other cultures be your inspiration, you too could invent something as reviled and divisive as Hawaiian pizza.
Whats a Canadian from Greece? Was the guy Greek living in Canada? Doesn’t that just make him Greek? Or was it a person born in Canada with Greek ancestry? That would not make him from Greece.
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