Cookoff: Italy vs. USA
We’re making plans to return to Italy. This will mark our 4th or 5th visit.
We found a travel company over there that knows what we like and how to deliver it: food & wine, baby!
I love Italian food and this visit, as with previous visits, will feature a cooking class for us.
But even praising Italian cuisine, I am going to admit I like the American version of certain Italian foods better.
Let’s start with pasta. Italians cook it ‘al dente.’
I’ve never looked up the literal translation, but I think it means ‘not done.’
Look, pasta is flour, egg and water. That’s it. It’s got no taste. It’s not meant to have taste.
Pasta is the equivalent of lettuce in a salad; it’s a delivery system for whatever sauce (dressing, on salad) you’ve chosen to pair it with.
Alfredo, tomato, meat, pesto… it’s all about the sauce. Cook the pasta till it’s done, y’all.
And now, I shall commit a bit of heresy because they invented it, but Italian pizza leaves something to be desired.
Mainly onions, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni and other meats and cheeses.
In short, what’s wrong with Italian pizza is not enough stuff on it! Especially fatty stuff.
But there are other issues, including their favor for Neapolitan-style pizza.
Classic Neapolitan-style Margherita pizza
Neapolitan pizza is a simple pizza with a lot of rules. The crust is made with a specific flour and is supposed to be no more than 3 millimeters thick.
The pie is then cooked at a blistering 900° in a wood-fired oven that puffs up the crust, ‘creating a slightly crunchy, airy crust.’
‘Burnt’ is a better word.
Another problem I have is the Pizza Margherita itself. It seems to be their national pizza.
Margherita is an insult to pizza. Burnt crust aside, there’s no meat and never enough cheese.
It’s a sissy pizza. That’s right, I said it.
Further, Margherita pizza is usually made with fresh mozzarella, a cheese with NO TASTE!
I get that fresh moz has a great mouth feel, but if you’re gonna put cheese on that thing, make it something wonderful. Aged mozzarella, smoked Gouda, feta, blue… all good choices in the proper proportions (meaning, lots of it).
And, of course, Parmesan. Lots of it, too.
Italians market their pizza on taste. We market ours on how much cheese we can pile on it.
“Look, we’ve even put cheese in the crust!”
Pizza is my favorite Italian food, but I prefer the our version.
I will now also admit Pizza Americano likely contributes to why you can look at a crowd of tourists in almost any country in the world and easily spot the Americans.
We got girth.
Pizza, Tibby style!