Posted on 12/16/2020 9:10:06 PM PST by nickcarraway
Mixing Indian, European, Arabic and Indian flavours, Zanzibar pizza embodies the islands themselves. But where does this wildly popular street food come from?
"Pole pole." Slowly. Spend a few days in Tanzania and you'll hear the Swahili expression more often than you can count – when you're trying to climb Mount Kilimanjaro at a steady clip, perhaps, or anytime you need a nudge to remind you to enjoy the more languid pace of coastal life in the East African nation. In this particular instance, the words came courtesy of a food vendor at Zanzibar's Forodhani Gardens night market – a gentleman who'd anointed himself "Mr Nutella" – to caution me when I bit so enthusiastically into my piping-hot Zanzibar pizza that I singed my tongue and let out a yelp.
My eagerness to dig in was understandable, considering the years of anticipation that had culminated in this exact moment. I first heard about the curiously named Zanzibar pizza more than a decade ago, when a friend returned from a bush-and-beach holiday in Tanzania and regaled me with tales of evening feasts at Stone Town's seafront Forodhani Gardens, the setting of nightly post-sunset street food extravaganzas. A highlight, she told me, was the Zanzibar pizza, a greasy disc of dough stuffed with a hodgepodge of ingredients, which, when combined, suggest a patchwork of flavours and origins that rarely collide anywhere else in the world.
For years, I tried plotting a trip to this semi-autonomous archipelago in the Indian Ocean to try it for myself. The idea of this dish lodged itself into a corner of my mind and nested there ever since, inspiring a mild case of culinary fernweh, a pain to see far-flung places. Yet, instead of longing for a faraway place I've never been, I found myself craving a dish
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Yeah....ya just can’t get good chimpanzee meat in the States.
So if it doesn’t look like a pizza, and it’s not made like a pizza, isn’t just an open face sandwich?
I left my own lofty pizza expectations to the capable hands of Mr Nutella. My anticipation mounted as he rolled out the dough and dressed it with all that is delicious in life. A layer of minced beef. A sprinkle of finely diced onions, tomatoes and green peppers. A triangle of The Laughing Cow processed cheese, whose pre-cut portions perfectly fit each Zanzibar pizza. A fistful of coriander. A generous dollop of mayo. A dusting of salt and pepper and a heaped spoonful of achari, a Swahili spin on the Indian pickled condiment achaar. And an egg, cracked with a flourish.
It could have been interesting, but no, it’s an unholy mess.
yeah
that’s not real pizza
I don’t imagine you can get that with pulled pork, instead.
I’d give it a try, for science. Not sure what the Vache Qui Rit is doing on the pizza, though.
So, who here exactly is guilty of who’s cultural appropriation? /s.
So, who here exactly is guilty of whose cultural appropriation? /s.
There's a Swedish pizza place near my old haunting grounds. Their pizzas have really odd ingredients that I have yet had the stomach to try.
Agreed. It doesn't have pineapple on it.
/sarc
well people have made a lot of flatbread type dishes in their areas
but they aren’t pizzas
putting swedish - or any other non-italian group in front of it - automatically disqualifies it from being pizza
Not a fan of florid writing. I thought she was going to tell me about Zanzibar pizza and what I started to read was a travelogue.
Hey! Whatsa matta you?!
Ping
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