by lucy gordan rastelli

LA CIMA BIANCA

SECOND PRIZE WINNER IS LEONARDO TODISCO. HIS TOPPINGS FOR LA CIMA BIANCA WERE TURNIP GREENS, SAUSAGES, TOMATO, RICOTTA, AND ALTA MURGIACHEESE.

Pizza is one of the simplest and most flavor-intense expressions of the culinary arts,” Giovanni Melis, President of Italy’s National Association of Pizza Chefs, told me in a recent interview. “The more attention the chef pays to the freshness of each and every ingredient, the better the result”. Pizza is fundamental to the Mediterranean diet. Second only to pastasciutta, it is the dish most beloved to Italians. So it logically succeeded last year’s primi piatti or “first courses” as one of the competitions (others being: blue fish, fruit and vegetables, best young chefs) during the 2nd Festival of Italian Cuisine held at Marina di Campo, on Elba, Italy’s third largest island, from September 26-29. Nazionale italiana pizzaioli (Italy’s National Agency of Pizza Chefs), alias NIP, chose the 20 finalists, one from each of Italy’s 20 regions, from over 900 contestants. The first and foremost criterion: each finalist in the “First National Championship of Typically Regional Pizzas” had to use exclusively ingredients typical of his or her region. Before offering the sizzling mouth- watering product to the international jury to sample, each finalist had to present a platter of its ingredients to a “control table” which judged their aroma and freshness.
Third prize for 2002 went to a strong and silent Calabria-born Piemontese: Angelo Conforti, Pizzeria “La Casita”, Piazza Vittorio Veneto 1, Borgaretto di Beinasco, (Torino), tel. 011-39-011- 2589944, closed Tuesday. He garnished his “Autumnal Velvet” with truffles, porcini mushrooms, capriolo and Castelmagno cheese.

AUTUMNAL VELVET

THIRD PRIZE WINNER ANGELO CONFORTI GARNISHED AUTUMNAL VELVET WITH TRUFFLES,PORCINI MUSHROOMS, CAPRIOLO AND CASTELMAGNO CHEESE.

The runner-up is gregarious pugliese Leonardo Todisco, Pizzeria Poquito Mas, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 5, 70052 Bisceglie (Bari), cellphone 338-4695151. His toppings for “La Cima Bianca” or “White Summit” were turnips greens, sausages, tomato, ricotta, and alta murgiacheese. The winner and national champion is a self-effacing youthful Ligurian grandmother, Anna Maria Garoscio, one of only two female contestants. Her Tavernetta “La Rampa” is located in Via Barberis Colomba, 18035 Dolceacqua, (Imperia), tel. 011-39-0184- 206198, closed Monday. She garnished her “Dolce Elba” with purée of watercress, pesto, valeriana, pine-nuts, and black olives.

Long Before Elba
Although pizza was almost certainly born more than 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, etymologists believe the term “pizza” is derived from an old Italian word meaning “a point”, which in turn led to the modern Italian word pizzicare, meaning “to pinch” or “to pluck”. This word appears for the first time in a Neapolitan dialect as early as the year 997 at Gaeta, a port between Rome and Naples, and refers, perhaps, to the manner in which the hot pie is plucked from the brick oven.
Pizza, made with flour, yeast, salt and water, has obvious analogies in Greek and Middle Eastern pita and flat, seasoned yeast breads like Moroccan Khboz Bishemar, but it is definitely the single food most firmly associated with Naples. The first documented pizzas were eaten in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, where archaeologists have uncovered brick pizzas ovens. But it was pizza without tomatoes, for, of course, 1,500 years had to elapse before the first tomato would be seen in Europe, when, according to local legend, Neapolitan sailors brought the first seeds back from Peru.
Although the tomato was held in low esteem by most Europeans, the poor people of Naples, subsisting quite literally on their daily bread, added this new ingredient to their yeast dough and created the first simple pizza, which they ate with their hands. By the seventeenth century it had achieved a notoriety among visitors who would go to poor neighborhoods to taste this peasant dish made by “pizzaioli” (pizza makers), but it still remained a local dish. Another appassionato was Ferdinand IV (1751-1825), the conservative and reactionary King of Naples and of the Two Sicilies, who liked to go incognito to savor pizza in the Salita Santa Teresa. To give his bride, the Austrian princess Marie Caroline, sister of Marie Antoniette, a taste, he invited the famous pizzaiolo Armando Testa to Court. Testa’s pizza was such a success that the king wanted to honor him, but the only recognition Testa wanted was to be called Monsù, like the French chefs at Court.
Also, it was not until the nineteenth century—about three hundred years after the tomato—that mozzarella cheese (made from buffalo, not cow’s, milk) became a standard pizza ingredient. Legend has it that the famous Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito of the Pizzeria di Pietro (or maybe his wife Pasqualina Brandi) was the first to make the mozzarella, basil, and tomato pizza in honor of the visit to Naples on November 6, 1889 of Italy’s Queen Margherita. Thinking that the commonly-used seasoning of bad-smelling garlic was unworthy of royalty, he replaced it with mozzarella. This dish, thereafter pizza Margherita or tricolore (after the three colors of the toppings and of the Italian flag), became very popular immediately. The other truly genuine, yet older (thus sometimes called “the queen mother”), Neapolitan pizza is called marinara either because it was the first food fisherman ate on return from their catch or because its toppings of oil, tomato, garlic and oregano could be stowed on voyages so that sailors (marinai) of this seafaring city could make pizza away from home.
From Naples to New York
Indeed, pizza remained a local delicacy until the concept crossed the Atlantic, at the turn of the last century, in the memories of immigrants from Naples, who settled in the cities along the eastern seaboard of the United States, especially New York City. The ingredients the immigrants found in their new country differed from those in the old. In New York, there was no buffalo-milk mozzarella, so cow’s-milk mozzarella was used. Oregano, a staple southern Italian herb, was replaced in America by sweet majoram, and the flavor of American tomatoes, flour, even water was different. Here the pizza evolved into a large, wheel- like pie, perhaps eighteen inches or more in diameter, reflecting the abundance of the new country.
These first American pizzas may have been made at home, but the baker’s brick oven, preferably fueled by wood, or (forno al legno), best of all poplar, was and still is essential to making a true pizza. Not to mention, for the best results, the dough must always be hand-kneaded, allowed to “rest” overnight in a wooden trough, and then flattened by hand, never with a rolling-pin or by machine. Indeed, a recent Italian law has spelled out six regola d’arte or rules for the making of a “pizza DOC” or “pizza napolitana verace”— in other words a genuine Neapolitan pizza: 1) the tomatoes must be San Marzano, 2) the mozzarella buffalo-milk, 3) the oil must be olive, 4) the salt natural not imitation, 5) the oven must be domed, made of bricks and wood-burning at between 420-80 degrees, and 6) the dough must be kneaded by hand with no rolling pins or blenders allowed. Would-be pizzaioli can enroll in Italy’s two Accademie della pizza in Brescia near Milan or in Caorle, half-way between Venice and Trieste, not in Naples, believe it or not!
The first licensed pizzeria in New York was opened by Gennaro Lombardi, a pizzaiolo from Naples, in 1895 on Spring Street, but others quickly followed in the Italian communities around the city. Still, pizza and pizzerias and, later, “pizza parlors,” were little known outside the large cities of the East until after World War II, when returning American G.I.s brought back a taste for the pizzas they had had in Naples during the Allies’ occupation along with the assumption that pizza, like spaghetti and meatballs, was a typical Italian dish, instead of a regional one.

DOLCE ELBA

WINNER AND NATIONAL CHAMPION, ANNA MARIA GAROSCIO, ONE OF ONLY TWO FEMALE CONTESTANTS. SHE GARNISHED HER DOLCE ELBA WITH PUREE OF WATERCRESS, PESTO, VALERIANA, PINE NUTS AND BLACK OLIVES

National Statistics
In fact, until about twenty years ago, it was next to impossible to find pizza on the menu north of Rome. Today, however, according to Burton Anderson, in his delightful Treasures of the Italian Table (William Morrow, 1994), Italians eat more than 2.5 billion pizzas a year, more than 45 per person, in over 38,000 pizzerie for a profit of over 6.3 billion dollars. To accomplish this, according to CIA—La Confederazione italiana agricoltori (The Federation of Italian Farmers), every year Italy’s pizzaioliconsume 7,500 tons of olive oil, 90,000 tons of mozzarella, 45,000 tons of tomatoes (San Marzano, Pachino, and Ciliegino), 135,000 tons of flour, and 300,000,000 basil leaves. As the accompanying beverage 50% choose beer, 30% mineral water or a soft drink and 20% wine, usually white and fizzy. “Every year Italians eat more and more pizzas,” explained Duvilio Nardi, secretary of NIP and, with his sister Fabiola owner of the “Pizzeria del Corso” at Corso della Repubblica in Forlì, tel. 011-39-0543-32674. “They used to eat only the classics. As can be seen from the finalists’ and winners’ pizzas, now our clients have much more imagination and choose their own ingredients. The toppings of our most popular pizza, “Fabiola Uno” at “Pizzeria del Corso” are tomato, pineapple, crustaceans, and mushrooms.”

In and Around Naples
Although the American promotion of pizza has resulted in its becoming an international favorite, from Tuscaloosa to Tokyo, nonetheless, Naples remains “the place” for a pizza. The best pizzerias are 160-year-old Porta Alba, Via Port’Alba; Pasquale Parziale’s O Caffone, Via Regina Margherita 76; Bellini, Via Santa Maria di Costantinopoli 80, a favorite with students; family-run Michele, Via Sersale 1/3, founded in 1870 by Michele Condurro and now run by his great-grandchildren, which serves only pizza margherita and pizza marinara; Pizzeria del Presidente, where Clinton stopped for a snack of margherita piegata in quattro(“folded in four”), considered by the proprietor, Ernesto Cacialli, to be the only real pizza; and Trianon, Via Colletta 46, with marble-topped tables and delicious “pizza lasagna”. The owner of Brandi, Salita Sant’Anna di Palazzo 1 near the San Carlo Opera House is a descendant of Raffaele Esposito, the inventor of the margherita, and Antonio Pace, the owner Da Ciro and president of La Vera Pizza DOC, Via Santa Brigida 71, claims one of his ancestors invented the “quattro stagioni” or “four seasons” with its four different toppings to please his family’s different palates. For mouth-watering pizzas outside but near Naples, go to Umberto Fornito’s Pizzeria Antica Frattese, Vicolo II Durante 2, in Fratta Maggiore; Gigino, Pizza al metro, Via Nicotera 10, in Vico Equense about 30 kilometers south on the breath-taking Amalfi Coast, where pizza is served by the meter at long trestle tables, or, on the terrace overlooking the Bay of Naples at The Hotel Santa Caterinain Amalfi itself. Elsewhere: Pizza al Metro’s new Roman branch called Gaudi, Via Giovanelli 8/12; Pizza Nuovo Mondo, Via Amerigo Vespucci 9-17 also in Rome; Lombardi’s, owned by the namesake grandson of the Big Apple’s first pizzaiolo, 32 Spring Street, and Tiramisu, 1410 Third Avenue on the corner of 80th Street, both in Manhattan; and Patsy’s Pizzeria, 19 Fulton Street, under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn, which was recently awarded first prize for the best pizza outside Naples by the Association of Neapolitan pizzaioli.
Speaking of Naples, honorable mention should go to Elba’s fourth-place Vincenzo Vitondo of “La Pagliarella”, Via Panoramica, Castellammare di Stabia, tel. -081-8026896, for his “La Vera Napoli” or “Real Naples” with fresh San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and basil.