Anthropology of travelling

Passport & Plate - Simple is Delicious

Italy | Tuesday, March 11, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Main ingredients:

- Italian spirit (do not ask me what is it exactly; you just need to "live" it to understand)
- Smiles; but real and big ones.

Other ingredients:

-Farina / Flour (it's not white, it's brownish)
-Olive oil (it's not bought, it's made from Italian olives in the olive-oil mill of the village by villagers)
-Yeast
-Tomatoes, but many many tomatoes.
-A lot of garlic; enough to kill your date that night.
-Parmagiano (from the cellar of Donatello)
-Basil (straightly picked up from the garden during cooking)
-More olive oil

Have to:
-Stone oven

 

How to prepare this recipe
Actually, the preparation is as simple as the ingredients. And as i discovered in 25 years of my life; that's the secret to make it delicious. However; there are tricky points as i learned from Italians and my experience:

We should use the finest quality of ingredients from nature

and

not just "enough" amount of them, always use more!

As you might understood, we are going to make an imaginary pizza now, hoping we can make it one day together in real life, somewhere in Italy. My receipe includes the story:

First of all, you need to be lucky. You know why? Because you need to have good people around you. But, actually this is not so difficult; we just need to learn to love people. And food. If you don't love food, please do not read this.

With all these good people around you, you walk, untli you reach down to the village; because it is not possible for the bus to climb up where you are staying. On the way, better to have some Italian coffee in your thermos so as soon as you need to stimulate your feelings, you can take a sip and then pass it to your friend.

After a bus trip more than an hour; you should arrive to a village in the mountains where you need to walk up from the skirts of the mountain. You would never know, that this walk will take you a house where you will eat the best pizza you can ever eat, until you go back to Italy hopefully with Passport & Plate opportunity.

Once you arrived to that lovely village house, two children should greet you with a huge smile and a lazy dog should take a look at you and then go back to sleep. Donatello should come out from the door with her husband to welcome you while cleaning her hands in her kitchen apron. As soon as you arrive, you should be offered wine, Italian and homemade one; but since you are too crowded, you should take a sip from the bottle-which is probably the best way to drink wine. As soon as you go inside with all these beautiful people; you should start to hear stories. (read below for the rest)

 

The story behind this recipe
My story has started in preparation part and now will continue;

For example, the story of donkeys which are used for all transportation in the village. Meanwhile, you already should start to mix flour with water. It is very important detail to use brownish flour as Donatello said. More you mix, better it will get; of course you should add the yeast in order to get a fluffy dough. The olive oil is an important detail which i learned it is creating kinda conflict between North and South Italy. More south you go, more olive oil you use-that's the magic. And once the dough is formed after playing with it for quite a long time (it must be a little bit harder than your earlobe!-don't laugh, we use this expression in Turkish), you should cover it with clean clothes and let them "rest" until you finish another bottle of wine with friends.

For the sauce of the pizza, you grade tomatoes which were already cooked for some time in the oven with olive oil, put extra-small onion pieces and garlic which shortly (1-2 min.) cooked in a pan before. Add oregano, basil, salt and some more olive oil and mix them with tomatoes, out of fire. Pepper and parmagiano can be added in the sauce or on top of the pizza; depends on how you like. I like to add to sauce and top at the same time. Now, the magical point, where you really need to be patience to learn is to make that amazing round with dough, only using your hands! In this story, you have chance to watch a cool show from Donatella. As soon as you have the perfect thin dough circles, you put a little bit olive oil with your hand on it, than put the sauce keeping attention that it should be well spread and like not more than half cm. should be left without sauce around the circle.

At the end of the story you are too excited and hungry to wait for the wooden bakers peel to take your pizza out of stone oven. As soon as it's out, you smell it because you will not smell such an amazing thing for a long time. And then, just Bon Apetit!