‘National story telling week’ has recently come to its yarn laden end and until ‘be late for something day’ which doesn’t happen until September (give or take), fear not as ‘National Pizza week‘ starts today. We Brits love our themed weeks, and whilst some of ours aren’t as weird as a few of the notable dates celebrated by our American cousins (The slightly disturbing National Beheading day is our personal favourite) we do, however both have rather a large penchant for the dough based, tomato sauce topped feast.
The humble Pizza started its bready life back in sixteenth century Naples, long before Dean Martin crooned about the moon hitting his eye like a big pizza pie. The flavoured flatbread or ‘Galette’ was a poor man’s dish, quite possibly sold to passing drinkers late into the balmy Neapolitan evening following a heady night on the Chianti. Jump forwards 500 or so years and the trend is somewhat re-enacted around Leicester square post one am (perhaps having found a substitution for the Chianti in most cases).
Pizza toppings have also changed vastly since the good old days of olive oil, basil, tomato and cheese and are becoming increasingly extravagant. Some local or culturally influenced garnishings of note include eel and mayonnaise (Japan), Ice Cream (Chester), fruit and meat combo (Hawaii) and kebab meat (Newcastle).
In preparation for National Pizza week, our good friends at Beer Genie teamed up with Domino’s Pizza and lesser known Pizza aficionados, the Saracens Rugby team, to match up some tasty world beers with an array of tempting toppings. After what was surely a raucous and difficult task, they shortlisted four pizza’s and no less than eight beers which we gladly jumped at the opportunity to try when offered. A few of the favourites were Pizza Florentine with Erdinger Weiss, Vito Corleone’s favourite, the New Yorker which was matched beautifully with Brooklyn Lager (when this one came our way, it was impossible to refuse) and our pick of the bunch, the Tandoori Hot with Thornbridge Jaipur IPA.
Beer is a wonderful accompaniment to food and its recent growth in its popularity in restaurants the length of breadth of the country is long overdue and comes as no surprise. It is the national drink. It does pre date wine in the UK and it does have a paint palette of flavours, aromas and textures, diverse enough to stand up or compliment almost any dish.
So…dial a pizza, raise your beer glass and here’s to a great week of Pizza, oh, and make sure you put a note in your diary for ‘Defy superstitions week’ on 13th September later this year (We are crossing our fingers for a great one).
http://www.beergenie.co.uk/home
Written by Gary Corrin
Date posted: 07/02/2012
Category: News.
Tags: beer, Dominos, Pizza.
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