Regardless of the fact that my native region is purely Nordic, this does not mean that traditions from other regions of my beloved Italy have not entered my culinary and chef repertoire as a priority. Pizza is one of them!
Pizza… Much more than a simple Neapolitan specialty, but a real culinary and cultural treasure, a Neapolitan pride famous and appreciated all over the world!
But when exactly was pizza born? The Neapolitan pizza was born around 1600 from the enormous Neapolitan culinary ingenuity, in need of making the traditional crushed bread more tasty and flavorsome. Initially it was bread dough cooked in wood ovens, seasoned with garlic, lard, coarse salt and sometimes caciocavallo cheese and basil. However, we will have to wait until the second half of the 1800s to find the first classic “tomato and mozzarella” pizza as we know it; we are talking precisely about 1889, the year in which there was a visit to Naples by the then sovereigns of Italy, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita.
Tradition has it that Raffaele Esposito, the best pizza maker of the time, made three pizzas for the sovereigns, but the last one was particularly important, a pizza with tomato and mozzarella whose colors deliberately recalled the Italian tricolor.
The sovereign appreciated the last pizza so much that she wanted to thank and praise the pizza chef in writing. For this reason and to reciprocate, Raffaele Esposito gave the name of the Queen to his culinary masterpiece, which has since spread and expatriated all over the world under the name of “Pizza Margherita”.
