Need Food Be Dull?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 8, 18 August 1939, Page 10

Need Food Be Dull?

Do you think we might experiment with brightening up our cooking? Not that it’s dull. Our cakes are as good as anywhere in the world, bar Scotland. But when it comes to meals ... Well, I’ve yet to meet a good cook who hasn’t, sometime, said, "O, food, -it’s monotonous!" Now, the rest of the world has lots to offer. Do you see why we shouldn’t cook from foreign recipes as well as we cook from our own? I don’t. Personally, I'm going to try "Pezza." They do it in Naples, and after a few weeks’ ship food it tastes like ambrosia. I can’t give you the recipe because I don’t know it, but I can tell you what it seems to be. It’s a kind of bread dough, with plenty of yeast, but also plenty of lard-laid on in dabs and folded in like pastry. The thing is to beat it out flat with the ball of the thumb and wrist-two hands going like the windinto flat rounds the size of a dinner plate. Then you place on one side chopped ham, chopped cheese, mixed herbs, chopped peppers and tomato sauce. Fold the other side over so that it’s like a big Cornish Pasty. Sprinkle on top more cheese (preferably a different kind) finely-grated, dabs of lard or butter, cayenne pepper, and tomato sauce. Now comes the difficulty of the oven, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to overcome it. The Naples one, of course, is the small baker’s oven. Wood is flung in, burned to a glowing heat, then swept aside and the Pezza, set on a long-handled shovel is flung in after it, well to the back. Instantly it rises. You watch the lard melt and the cheese ooze and bubble. When it’s golden brown, you get your shovel and turn it dexterously round about. When at last it’s on a sizzling plate, you steer a straight course for the nearest table and don’t look up till it’s finished.

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