I hadn't really planned to post in this thread until the last few comments here.

I grew up in a rural area and first tasted pizza when I went away to college. It was “love at first bite!!!” I couldn't afford it very often, but I looked forward to each and every slice.

It was a great revelation to discover that pizza and beer were the perfect food pairing. I even discovered the “breakfast of champions” - cold pizza and stale beer.

I still like leftover pizza for breakfast, though now I reheat it in the toaster oven and have it with coffee and orange juice.

When I was just starting out on my pizza odyssey, the greasier, the better. Pepperoni and sausage were my favorites. I now tend toward lighter toppings, though my single favorite pizza was one made by a small shop in southern Japan - Strawberry Cones. They started as an ice-cream shop, but had added other foods. (Unfortunately, they had closed by my last visit to the town.)

They made Japanese-style pizza - thin crust, but with toppings not usually seen on this side of the Pacific. My kids favorite topping was canned corn - whole kernel corn that popped in your mouth.

My favorite of their varieties was one called “Ethnic Pizza”. I could never figure out what ethnicity they were trying to produce, but it was clearly not Japanese.

The tomato sauce included so much red pepper that my Korean neighbors proclaimed it too spicy to eat. There was Mozzarella cheese, corn, potato slices and, my favorite, “ika-no-shiokara” (generally translated as “salted squid guts”). Ika-no-shiokara is anchovies raised to the highest possible degree.

On this side of the Pacific, I always ask for anchovies on my pizza, but they are a pale imitation of my true favorite.

Ah... would you believe...

CHICKEN PIZZA?

Alright, but it still is the CELLAR!

Paolo, I won't say how it SMELT.

However, CHICKENS are hard to catch. Can I tell you about the One-Eyed Monkey and the CHICKEN who got away?



A-1

no but if you hum a few bars I'll fake it.

I had a great line about eating Italian food that got lost in Paolo's Purges {!}

it was - - I'll bet you're the type of person that thinks Gourmet Italian food is leftover spaghetti and pizza rolls.

As for habanera and hot sauce, well I remember, years ago (When I used to walk to school up hill both ways) that the Goombas in the neighborhood used to dry red and green banana peppers and then crush them and eat them in fried bell peppers, onions and eggs sandwiches- - the name of the dish was purgatory.

If ya wanna make a hot pepper pizza that burns the throat going down and the asshole coming out - - Be my guest and enjoy the fun! Just don't invite me to the aftermath.

On the subject of unusual pizzas, here are a couple I have eaten--both were concocted as home cooking, and I ate them as a guest. Weren't too bad, although I would never have ordered them.

One was a bloody mary pizza, in which the sauce was tomato paste mixed to the proper consistency with beer. The cheese was one with a cured flavor, I think either munster or brick--this was in a part of the country where you could get brick cheese. Instead of pepperoni, there was sliced salami or summer sausage as a topping, and pickled onions instead of the fresh sliced ones. There were a couple of other topping ingredients, no herbs I can remember. It was okay. Maybe it could be a hangover antidote.

Another one wasn't what everybody would call pizza, but the lady who made it called it a borscht pizza. The crust had some rye flour in it, enough that you could taste the rye, the sauce was (I guess) thickened borscht broth. No tomatoes in it. On top of the sauce was a thin layer of sour cream instead of cheese, and then there were diced beets, carrots, chopped cabbage and a couple of other vegetables as toppings. Don't recall there being any herbs on this one either. I remember it being kind of good, but not what you usually think of when you hear the word, "pizza."

As far as that goes, I never have really thought that ham and pineapple are proper toppings for pizza, but I guess a lot of other people do. And, after all, ham and pineapple pizzas are actually pretty good.

That sounds perfectly awful - Borscht Pizza - in fact, it sounds inedible.

As for the Bloody Mary - I've seen pizza made with ketchup or catsup and shredded cheddar cheese. I get the shakes just thinking about it. It smelled awful.

If you are that desperate, just cover the dough with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and add any dried herb - basil, rosemary, orgegano or marjoram, thyme, sage, garlic if you have it - - And dust it with ground Spaghetti cheese. That will actually taste better.

And you can use sausage but not Salami - - you can use proscuitto or smoked ham, but not bacon.

AND NO VINEGAR (nothing pickled) unless it's a pepperocini. . .

I thought I remembered reading something like this a couple of years ago, and it popped right up on a Yahoo search. Down at the bottom of the page--A pizza to end all pizzas (not for the squeamish.)

http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/etplcnt2.html

You can have a philosophical argument about whether this involves cannibalism or not. Actually, you could use similar tissue which is ejected when a calf is born, though I don't know of anybody actually doing that.

Well, you can't post the website address of the Placenta factories...



Those were some pretty damn good looking factories, too.

A-1

OK...maybe i'm being territorial...but NY style pizza is the best...within 2 miles of where i live, there are about 10 great pizza places...Chicago pizza can be very good too...but there's nothing like a nice New York slice.

Being from NY there are just some things that will never belong on a pizza...things like pineapple, eggs, and don't even get me started on that bloody mary pizza!

Among the things that do belong...sausage, meatballs, anchovies (even though i hate them personally), mushrooms, pepperoni. Topped with grated parmesan and garlic...mm mm good!

i'll get off of my soapbox now, and head to one of those pizzerias!

Ahem, Pizza is not Italian. The word is Italian, but, if you look it up in an older Italian dictionary, over 50 years old, you'll find a definition similar to "A savoury Neapolitan bun." That doesn't sound much like a tomato and cheese pie, does it ? When I was in Italy in 1954, pizza, as we know it, was not to be found in Taranto, Naples, Rome, Firenze, Pisa, Livorno, Genova, or Palermo, Sicily. In fact, not merely not to be found but unknown. The only pizzeria I found on the Mediterranean was in Marseilles, France, and it was operated by an American ex-pat. from Brooklyn. What we call pizza seems to have originated either in New York City in the late 1890's or in the vicinity of Verona, New Jersey in the very early 1920's. It is common in Italy and the rest of Europe now, having been introduced from the USA.