/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>14457071

Italy has glorious high culinary tradition extending back centuries: spaghettios, pepperoni hot pockets, italian ice. But the chief cuisine, the national dish is the venerable Pizza Pie. In Roman times, only the Emperor and select nobility could afford to eat it. But later, it became so engrained in popular Italian culture that every housewife had her own secret recipe, to compete in the village's weekly pizza feast. This competition led to innovations--stuffed crust, meat lover's, buffalo chicken, shaqaroni--which developed in parallel with Italy's gastronomical ascendency. But then World War II happened. Austerity measures forced Italians to abandon their rich cuisine. Even the pizza pie, Italy's pride and joy, was affected. Wartime pizza pie was little more than saltines, with a smear of ketchup and a dollop of rancid milk, and some lawn clippings sprinkled on top. But for Italians, it's essential to save face. Ettore Boiardi, appointed Minister of Flavor under Mussolini, began a propaganda campaign to convince his compatriots that this new poverty-pie was in fact the true, authentic pizza--and that Hawaiian pizza, for example, was nothing but foreign degeneracy. The people were desparate for some shred of dignity to grasp onto, so they eagerly swallowed this lie. Their children never even tasted the real thing, and to this day, Italians will claim that OP's pic, which looks like someone dropped some naan bread on the ground in a barnyard, is "pizza". And they will defend its "sophisticated" flavor and "impeccable" heritage until the end.