Claire - Take a trip to the shore - Neptune City's Pete & Elda's on 35 - incredible! Read West Milford received 16" of the white stuff Tuesday night, how about Ringwood area? ----- Original Message ----- From: CJ Lisa To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 9:45 AM Subject: Re: [NJ-Memories] Tomato Pie Hi that was interesting -- I actually make personal pizza's using -- not pita bread with the pockets, but the Greek or middle Eastern flatbread (no pockets) -- and it comes out great. I put it into a toaster oven and get a crunchier crust - not the soggy stuff that results as being in a box. I've always like reheated slices best for that reason. I would like to find an old-fashioned "bar" pizza -- they had a different taste and texture -- more like fresh tomatoes on them. Claire formerly from Hudson County now in Passaic County ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [NJ-Memories] Tomato Pie In a message dated 1/26/2004 5:01:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: What you re describing is a basic pizza isn't it? I realize some people called it by that name, but someone on this list said a tomato ie was made with green tomatoes. That's the recipe I'm looking for. Got one? Tomato pie = pizza - it's a simple variation of REAL pizza - not like those abominations like deep dish, or Chicago style, or worse (gag) California pizza. - the only pizza worse than those three is the pizza made in apan - but they at least have an excuse. Back around WW II, my father's friend converted his Italian bakery shop in Newark into a restaurant and pizza shop. Sometime after the war my father started helping out in the pizza kitchen on weekends. Anyway, in '46 or '47, my father took me to the shop to spend some time in the pizza kitchen with him and the chef. It was the beginning to my fascination with pizza. Pizza means pitta - like in pita bread. It is a Middle Eastern flatbread. Before the Roman Empire existed, the Greeks developed a port city that eventually became known as Naples. Along with the Greeks came Phoenician traders and Hebrew traders bringing pitta with them. The way they would eat it, they would sprinkle olive oil on the pitta, some cheese and bits of fish or vegetables. Remember this was 1000 years before the first tomato arrived in Europe. Over time, the word pitta became pizza. If you listen to a real Italian say the word, it's not "pete's uh" its pronounced more like "pitz-suh". It was only made in and around Naples. Naples also had the good fortune of being the birthplace of mozzarella. Around the time of Columbus, some monks nearby invented it using buffalo milk -- that's water buffalo, not the kind we have here. Mozzarella became the perfect cheese to use on pizza. In 1889, Rafael Esposito, a chef in Naples was asked to make a special pizza for the visiting king of Italy and his Queen Margharita. He racked his brain and then came up with the idea of a pizza with toppings that would be the colors of the Italian flag - red, white and green. The white and green were easy, mozzarella and basil sprigs. For the red he decided to try slices of tomatoes - a new vegetable just introduced into Italy. He called it La Pizza Margarita. It was an instant hit and pizza with tomatoes (or pizza con pomodoro) it became one of the last big things immigrants from the Naples area remembered about their homeland when they arrived in the U.S. They tried to duplicated it here, but it was impossible to get mozzarella - no buffalo milk. And even today, buffalo mozzarella doesn't last more than a few days after it's made. But in New Jersey we had lots of tomatoes! When DeLorenzo's opened in Trenton in 1927 - it was maybe the third pizzeria in the U.S. after New Haven and NYC, yup, New Haven has the first - they used a lot more tomatoes than in Naples. And gave it the closest English name they could come up with - tomato pie. Tomato pies have chunky sauce on them - more like diced and semi-crushed tomatoes - rather than the slices of tomatoes on the Naples original. And the original tomato pizza had slices of mozzarella on them, not ground-up stuff like most of today's pizza. And I know this is true because my father heard pizza stories from his father who was around Naples when Chef Esposito revolutionized pizza. Wow - that's long, I could go for a slice of la pizza Margarita right now! Regards, Annandale Frank ============================== Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more. http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237 ============================== Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more. http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237