Day 619: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: pizza
Pizza. It's so common we take for granted how special it really is.
It begins as the culinary music of the spheres – or at least, spheroids and round shapes. A roughly round lump of dough, a bunch of rounded tomatoes, onions, olives, and also, if your pizza maker loves their work, a roundish, moist and fatty ball of mozzarella.
The onions are diced and become squarish. The olives are sliced into circles and arcs. The mozzarella is shredded into long strands or sliced into thin strips. Garlic – literally, round to a point – and basil and oregano are common, and you might get some rosemary or fennel depending on where your pizza maker is from.
The dough has to go from a roundish lump to a flying saucer, a saucer flung into the air by the force of a human arm, and stretched into a flat round by the same centrifugal, centripetal, and gravitational forces that govern the motion of stars and planets.
And then comes the heat treatment, when all of it goes to a stove not too far off the heat of a dying star, in order to be transformed into the fully loaded saucer of delights we call pizza. And how do we greet this welcome alien visitor to our regular diet? By slicing and consuming it, of course!
If the Martians had brought pizza when they came in War of the Worlds, there would have been no need for a war. We all already know what to do with pizza. That's a peace offering.
Now I'm hungry. Let's order some pizza.
Photo Credit: Brenna Huff on Unsplash
The pizza looks really good, and it would be nice to know how to make it.
Pizza is actually not overly complicated... you need some kind of flat bread or dough that you can flatten (you can roll it out by hand) for a crust, tomato sauce, some good cheese, and your choice of toppings. Basically: cover the crust with a layer of sauce, and then season with your choice of herbs and spices -- garlic, basil, oregano, or whatever you like -- and top with cheese and the rest of your toppings. The pizza in the picture has tomato sauce, sliced onions, fresh basil, and pepperoni sausage. Bake it all at a high temperature until the crust is brown, the cheese is bubbly, and your toppings are done. My mother used to make individual pizzas for us on canned biscuit dough that she rolled out and let us top.
We know now wat taking food for granted means, especially this kind of food which has now become a luxury.
You have made a wonderful presentation of the process, from the spheres to the flat triangles, some interesting geometrical parallels
Thank you so much... pizza is one of my favorite things because my mother used to make little ones at home for my sister and me, and we watched the process (except for throwing the dough into the air) at work!