Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (58 page)

by Massimo Di Nonno / Prospekt

Prospekt is a Milan-based independent photo agency representing photojournalists based in Milan, Rome, Paris, London, Istanbul, Berlin, and New York. Prospekt photographers work on European and international news and features. Founded in early 2005 and directed by the photographer Samuele Pellecchia, Prospekt aims to produce surveys and reports bringing out of the value of each photographer's identity.

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In postwar Italy pizza caught on as a festive food, a cheerful collective meal, and an alternative to pasta, which is so distinctly domestic. For today's Italians, choosing between pasta and pizza means choosing between staying home and going out—that is, between time spent with the family (keywords: family, mother) and social time (keywords: friends, companionship).

The contrast between pasta and pizza is underscored in the homespun philosophy fed to us by the glossy magazines. According to the nation's psychologists, pasta is associated with mother and family, since it is eaten daily at home. Pizza, on the other hand, is associated with lovers, since it is very difficult to prepare at home and requires going out.

Naturally, the historian of gastronomic culture will object that, in ancient times, pasta wasn't cooked at home either, but was bought already prepared in the nearby tavern. Neapolitans, Romans, Sicilians, Emilians, and Genoese did not like being shut in at home and preferred the precious human contact found in trattorias. Goethe described macaroni not as a component of the domestic diet, but as a social event:

 

Though people here lack our well-equipped kitchens and like to make short work of their cooking, they are catered for in two ways. The macaroni, the dough of which is made from a very fine flour, kneaded into various shapes and then boiled, can be bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money. As a rule, it is simply cooked in water and seasoned with grated cheese. Then, at almost every corner of the main streets, there are pastry-cooks with their frying pans of sizzling oil, busy, especially on fast days, preparing pastry and fish on the spot for anyone who wants it. Their sales are fabulous, for thousands and thousands of people carry their lunch and supper home, wrapped in a little piece of paper.
¹

 

Dickens, too, noticed this, not in Naples, but in Genoa, and the sight did not arouse any joy in him: “Beneath some of the arches, the sellers of maccaroni and polenta establish their stalls, which are by no means inviting.”
²

Nevertheless, it's worth repeating that this banal cliché (pasta = hearth and home, pizza = sociability) faithfully reflects today's reality. Pasta is now eaten at home with the family. In Italian homes it is cooked much more often than any other first course. In the lexicon of gastronomy, pastas in broth are called
minestre
, soups. Pasta is served as a first course if it is topped with light vegetable sauces. If the sauce is chock-full of protein-rich ingredients (such as meat, fish, shrimp, mussels, or wild boar), then it naturally becomes a main course instead.

After World War II, the proportion of working women increased nationwide, and a
behavioral model was established for European families in which everyone is away from home for the entire day. Today, few Italians manage to go home for lunch, even though a lunch break sometimes lasts three hours. Pasta is therefore reserved for the evening, when everyone finally gathers around the family dinner table. We live in an age when the abundance of electrical appliances and the availability of ready-made and frozen sauces make work easier in the kitchen. Nevertheless, thanks in part to the assimilation of foreign models (from the Italian-Americans: pasta is family, home), the ritual of pasta-making is notoriously associated with a huge pot in the family kitchen, along with discussions about what to pair with what, choices regarding sauces and shapes, and exchanges of views that sometimes lead to disputes of culinary principle.

Pizza, on the other hand, which returned to Italy at the end of the war, at the same time that everything American became fashionable, is a cheerful, carefree ritual food, which does not require either effort or memory! There are more than seven hundred pasta shapes, while there are only ten classic pizzas. You can't go wrong when you order them. As for the nonclassic versions, it isn't necessary to remember them, since they generally bear the name of the pizzeria, or a trendy song, or the girlfriend of the
pizzaiolo
, who puts whatever comes to mind on it. Anyone who doesn't like it doesn't have to order it.

Pizza is a truly social food. It is unrealistic to try to make it at home, given that it traditionally requires a wood-burning oven heated to 485 degrees C, with an incandescent vault. Just try making it at home without burning down the whole neighborhood!

Transforming a frozen pizza into an edible pizza is an absurd idea to Italians. To have pizza for supper, you either go to a pizzeria and eat it on the spot (which is more expensive) or, provided you can run home in less than two minutes and find everyone already seated at the table with their napkins tucked around their necks, you buy the pizzas hot, packed in flat cardboard boxes that give off an aroma of basil, garlic, and oregano; burning your hands, you then rush home to eat them at an insane speed so they won't get cold. The second option is, of course, cheaper, but the diners will know that they have been deprived of part of the pleasure of the experience.

Going out for a pizza is an ideal diversion for young people, as well as for those on a budget. A pizzeria, naturally, is less expensive than a restaurant, though neither is it as economical as one might expect, given the insignificant cost of the ingredients. Apparently, it is not the price of the ingredients that matters. Other factors affect the cost of an evening in a pizzeria. The customer pays for the decor of the place (the oven with its visible fire, the glowing embers, the rustic furnishings), and also helps to pay the pizza maker's high salary. Among cooks, pizza chefs are the highest paid. They don't “work”;
they are masters on tour. In many places pizza is served only at night: which means that the
pizzaiolo
will only perform his solo concert then.

The pizza maker must have been born in Naples (or at least pass for a Neapolitan). He must be hieratic: like a celebrant, he performs every gesture in the public eye. To this guardian of sacred truths are entrusted the proportions of the ingredients, measured meticulously, down to that pinch of flour that is thrown under the dough in the pan (the famous pinch is recorded in all pizza recipes, probably because of its assonance:
pizzapizzico
). The
pizzaiolo
also knows the baking times, those fractions of seconds needed for the pizza to be thoroughly, though not overly, baked. He controls his gestures to perfection: he tosses the dough in the air, stretches it, twirls it, tosses it back up . . .

The dough must be stretched by hand, not rolled out with a rolling pin. This is one of the fundamental secrets of pizza, or so says Gianluca Procaccini, 2001 winner of the pizza-cooking contest held in the town of Salsomaggiore. His victory was owed to a virtuoso execution of an individual variation of
pizza ai quattro formaggi
, or “four-cheese pizza.” In his masterpiece, Procaccini introduced Camoscio d'Oro, Crema di Formaggi, mozzarella, and mild Gorgonzola instead of the classic cheeses.

Pizza invites the entire group of diners to have fun. The dialogue between customers and restaurant staff is ceremonial and playful. The ordering of pizza is sort of like a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe, and conducting the verbal game is the talkative waiter, the exact opposite of the pizza maker who, solemn, and priestlike, remains silent while tending to the oven.

At the moment of decision, the customer deals in watchwords, code names. The basic types of pizza are margherita, marinara,
capricciosa
, Sicilian, Neapolitan, four seasons, four cheeses, Roman,
diavola
, and
ortolana
. For an Italian, this is the alphabet; it is impossible not to know the composition by heart: the list of ingredients on the menu is superfluous.

 

Napoletana
(Neapolitan): tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, oregano, capers.

Marinara
: simply a disk of dough spread with tomato and garlic.

Capricciosa
: mozzarella, mushrooms, small artichokes,
prosciutto cotto
, olives, olive oil.

Romana
(Roman): tomato, mozzarella, anchovies, oregano, olive oil.

Quattro stagioni
(four seasons): usually the same ingredients as
capricciosa
, but in separate sections, not mixed together.

Diavola
: tomato, mozzarella, spicy salami, oregano, olive oil.

Quattro formaggi
(four cheeses): provolone, Parmesan, Gruyère, pecorino.

Siciliana
(Sicilian): black olives, green olives, anchovies, capers, caciocavallo cheese, tomato.

Margherita
: tomato, mozzarella, basil.

Ortolana
: mozzarella, eggplant, peppers, zucchini.

 

There are also pizzas named for their ingredients, such as
pizza alla Parmigiana
, with Parmesan and ricotta, or
pizza al prosciutto
. Calzone is a pizza folded in half and pinched closed around the edges, like an oversized ravioli.

Cheerfully eating this wonderful, almost childish food, the patron often enjoys additional playful moments in sharing the food with others. This corresponds well with Neapolitan traditions, which stress a particular ethic of personal, everyday compassion. It can be seen, for example, in the famous
caffè sospeso
, a coffee paid for in advance and held for someone who can't afford it.

The poet and screenwriter Tonino Guerra, a friend and longtime collaborator of Federico Fellini, told this story to listeners of the radio station
Moscow Echo
on September 4, 2005:

 

We go into a cafe near the station. Two guys arrive and say, “Five coffees—two to drink here, three left
sospesi
[suspended].” They pay for five coffees and drink their two. I ask De Sica: “What is this suspended coffee?” He says, “Wait, you'll see.” Then more people come in—some girls; they drink their coffee and pay normally. Three lawyers come in and order seven coffees: “Three we'll drink, and four suspended.” They pay for seven, drink three, and leave. Then a young man orders two coffees, drinks one, pays for two, and leaves. De Sica and I sit there chatting until noon. The doors are open. I look out at the piazza, flooded with sunlight, and all of a sudden I see a dark shadow approaching the door. When he's right in front of the door near the bar, I see that it's a beggar. He pokes his head into the café and asks: “Is there a
caffè sospeso
?”

 

Like the
caffè sospeso
, there was also once a
pizza settimanale
in Naples, the pizza that the needy were allowed to eat in a pizzeria once a week: the customers of the place paid for it, leaving a cent or two at a time. In practice, the system of “pizzas for the poor” in Naples was at times a cover-up to disguise usury, and the sums involved were not pennies. In any case, Neapolitan beggars in the past could firmly count on a bowl of pizza crusts every night, left over by customers.

These authentic Neapolitan rituals and rites of the sacred celebration of pizza are unheard of outside the confines of Naples, unknown to customers of those common eateries in the north where the name “pizza” may bring to mind a soggy, wobbly dough, soaked in oil.

What an authentic Neapolitan or Roman connoisseur calls pizza is a fine work of art, precise and dry, not oily, with a golden center and scorched edges, covered with a light layer of sauce
sub conditione
(subject to particular condition, not improvised). Neapolitan pizza was designated as a Traditional Specialty Guaranteed in the
Gazzetta Ufficiale
of Monday, May 24, 2004. Three full pages are devoted to the production and presentation of this dish, and all the steps that must be taken to prepare it are described and regulated.

In June 1999, the administrative body of Brussels that regulates the daily life of the countries of the European Union attempted to limit the temperature of wood-burning pizza ovens by law, restricting it to 250 degrees C. This triggered such a revolt in Italy that the Belgians had to back off and remove the proposed bill from the agenda. Today wood-burning ovens, in which the temperature can and must reach nearly 500 degrees C, are once again permitted. Then, and only then, does the characteristic smoky flavor develop that distinguishes real, authentic pizza from imposters.