Greensboring :: Outside The Media. Beyond The News.

As many of you know, I'm writing a cook book. I'm really excited about it, and it's almost finished. The problem is it's still growing. One of the recipes was for Coca. Coca is basically a Spanish equivalent to America's pizza. It's big difference is the lack of tomato sauce, though you certainly could add it. I've Americanized the recipe a bit and combined it with one of my childhood favorite: Little Cesar's crazy bread for a recipe called Coca Loca. It's basically a flat bread, buttered, covered in provolone and parmesan cheese. It's mad good, and we made it for Christmas day brunch along with our burritos.

Today though, Shannon states we've got an even better incarnation of the recipe. It's basically the same thing, but we add caramelized red onions & turkey kielbasa to the top. It's really a unique flavor that Shannon apparently has claimed one of her new favorites.

I'd always wondered if the pizza was invented in Italy (or China) before or after Europeans reached the New World. Tomatoes are native to the Americas so wouldn't have been available until then. Does real Italian cooking even require tomatoes and is the adding of tomato sauce to everything Italian an American habit?

Oh gosh... I should really know the answer better... but... If memory serves me right, it had something to do with the vineyards for crops and/or rotting tomatoes.... So it's my belief it is native to Italian food, but it was midway through it's historical evolution..... then again.. I'm talking about "tomatoes" not "marinara"... I think "Marinara" is strictly an American invention... Personally I prefer a pizza sauce which is thick and chunky... in fact my recipe involved both diced tomatoes and crushed... thin marinara.... just isn't the same thing in my book.

Italians do use a lot of tomatoes in their food, although it's relatively new (400 years).

Pizza in Italy is quite different to Americanized pizza and there are very different regional styles. I spent several months in Turkey and they have something called pide which is probably more like the original mediterranean pizza

FYI Pide also a style of Turkish bread

Here is a description and recipe for pizza pide