Pizza Paradigm

Imagine, if you will, a really good Italian pizza. A thin and crunchy crust, a dab of freshly made tomato sauce, some thinly sliced vegetables sprinkled on top, accompanied by some parma ham, topped with a delicate hint of mozarella - a beautifully balanced symphonie of tasty goodness. If you are doing this properly, your mouth should now be watering, and something deep down tempts you towards Pane e Vino. But don't go yet - I'll take the urge away for you by playing a simple trick of size: now, slowly allow your mental pizza to enlarge. It expands, and epands in all directions. Not only does your pizza spread , the crust also becomes thicker, and, all of a sudden, the topping becomes far more elaborate. The thin slices of Parma ham become more like chunks of bacon, the tomato sauce threatens to overflow, some more random stuff is piled on, and, above all, the amount of cheese - goodness gracious, the amount of cheese (and it's not even just fresh mozarello anymore, it's turning into heaps of processed fat)! Allow this process to go on until one slice of pizza (let's say an eighth of the whole thing) contains about one and a half time the amount of nutrients your entire original pizza was made up of.

I believe you will agree with me that the symphony of flavours has become rather skewed, and the music now sounds less like Mozart than like a power-drill. And yet, something like this is exactly the evolution the pizza, that once so noble carrier of Old World values, has undergone in the United States. You do not order a pizza, in this country, 'cause you wouldn't know what to do with it (it feeds something like 7 to 10 people), you order a slice.

I hate to generalise, but the Pizza Paradigm is not unapplicable to the way Americans tend to do food: big and, above all, rarely very subtle. Mind you, I have eaten very good things here, and will readily admit that American pizza does not taste at all bad. It's just that I'm beginning to long for a bite that is not just healthy or tasty (no problem finding any of that, here), but a true delight of balance and elegance... Interestingly, the closest I've come to that so far was at a barbeque I went to, yesterday. The Canadian who hosted it, Franz, is an amazing cook (who even made the tahini for the hommos himself), and the marinated porc was brilliant, as were the tofu satés. I'm definitely going to talk him into cooking for his fans more often.

So there is the Pizza Paradigm, but, like with all good theories, it is not all-encompassing. There are glimpses of light in this culinary darkness. And I guess I'll survive without Pane e Vino for just a bit longer.