Rog T's Food Blog #11 - I simply love ham and pineapple pizzas! What of it?

 One of my very best food memories was coming out of The Beehive pub in Edgware, with a rather attractive Italian Au Pair I'd just met, when I was about 18. We were both hungry and I offered to treat her to a Pizza from the Perfect Pizza takeaway which was around the corner, opposite the Police station. Now bear in mind, it was 1980 and Pizza's were still seen as a bit new and exotic. As I recall, The Perfect Pizza had just opened and the consensus was that it was the best!

Not being that familiar with Pizza's, I sought guidance. She said "Try the Hawaiian, it's ham and pineapple and it is delicious". I asked if that was what she ate in Italy, she laughed and said she'd never heard of it until she came to Edgware but it was wonderful. And guess what? It was, it was delicious. I never really thought too much more about it. My tastes changed and I tended to prefer a hot spicy pizza with chorizo and a biug lashing of chilli oil, but once in a while, I'd have the Hawian when the mood took me. In truth, like many of my favourite experiences in life, I'm not quite sure it ever really lived up to the first bite on that cold November night in 1980, but I've retained a fondness for them. 

Over the last few years, I've noticed that there is a bit of a hate campaign against pineapple on pizza, with a general snobby view that it is 'not Italian'. This rather amuses me, as my experience of pizzas in Italy is markedly different to what you get in the UK. Firstly the bases tend to be thinner and crispier. The the tomato sauce generally tastes far better, fresher and with a tang and the cheese is also far better quality. So it is a bit ironic that people snobbily say "Italians would not stand for a Hawaiian!". In truth, I doubt they'd be too happy with any of the main UK pizza delivery services. The Perfect Pizza didn't last to long. As I later realised, it's Pizza's were just to authentic for the tastes of the British.

BTW, to me the one sure way to tell that a pizza will be a bit bland is if the edge is thick dough. My daughter bought a pizza oven and makes authentic pizzas with fresh ingredients. The edges are thin and slightly burned and are delicious. Thats how they tend to be in proper italian restaurants.

There is nothing that irritates me more than food snobbery, especially when  it is ill informed. If you don't like pineapple on pizza, that's fine. Don't eat it, but what you do or don't like is irrelevant to the rest of humanity. There are things that I quite enjoy that I avoid, but this is usually because I think that the farming methods etc are not to my liking and are bad for the planet. So if someone says to me that hormone injected beef from the USA is not a good way to farm beef, I will investigate and take on board if the arguments are convincing. If, however, someone tells me that I shouldn't put ketchup on my sausage sandwich, or pineapple on my pizza, because they don't like it, I'd be a moron if I took it on board. 

It always makes me chuckle that I was introduced to the Hawaiian pizza by an Italian, however if it had been my mate from Burnt Oak and I'd enjoyed it, then my opinion would be the same. In my experience, people who are influenced by food snobbery, or even worse, who expound it, are the most silly and miserable souls on the planet. If I thought a black pudding, mushroom and gherkin pizza was tasty, I'd have it and stuff what the rest of you think!