Pizza Margherita

Pizza Margherita is my favourite pizza I think - the only improvement I might make to it is to add some anchovies. But why am I writing about it? Well last night was the Italian food history program in which, this week, he was talking about food for the poor. And in the course of the program he talked about pizza and pizza Margherita in particular. I learnt a couple of things that the rest of the world knows but that I didn't.

Number one - it is named after Queen Margherita - wife of King Umberto - who visited Naples and where a chef made a new pizza in her honour, in the colours of Italy - red white and green. She was very popular apparently. I gather this is probably an apocryphal story, but nevertheless it was at this time (1889) that pizza Margherita became popular. And it's definitely named after her.

The other thing I learnt was that pizza really did not become the world's favourite food as it is now until after WW1. As the presenter said, pizza in one form or another has most likely been around for centuries - flatbread with some sort of topping is known the world over and is a basic food for the poor. However, pizza as we know it today was not accepted until then - partly because it was 'poor food' and partly because it often was a means of spreading cholera - poor hygiene. One thing is for sure that most people agree that pizza originated in Naples.

So what is pizza Margherita? Well the classic version has to include tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil. And it also seems that you really shouldn't put too much topping on it. Other than that though - the variety of presentation is enormous. In the program he visited a world champion who showed him how to make one. She just put a smallish amount of tomato sauce (or maybe even just passata) in the centre, dotted some basil and some quality mozzarella on top and put it in the oven. And when I did my usual quick search on the internet I found that in 2014 and again in 2016 Melbourne based chefs have also won this world championship - well the 2016 one may have just won best in Australia at the world championship. Anyway - we can do it here. The first was in Lygon Street, the other in Preston. Below are several different versions of Pizza Margherita. The first one is the 2014 world champion version from Lygon Street. So you can see - not a lot of filling. And this is where most of us westerners go wrong. Go easy on the topping.

Now Elizabeth David claims that the first pizza was a fried pizza - and I used to make this at home. Very delicious it was too. And while I was flicking through Jamie Oliver's Italy I found another recipe (with a picture much like the world champion pizza Margherita) for a fried pizza. I mean to try this in the near future, You can find the recipe on his website. Here's the picture.