Instructions
Ever get the feeling that the world is not what it seems? As a kid, in those detached moments just before sleep comes, I used to wonder if everything I saw around me was simply the dream of another being.
On waking, of course, those thoughts had evaporated with the night, but the sense stuck with me nonetheless.
It was more than a decade later, as a university student, that I learned of Cartesian philosophy. Centuries earlier, Rene Descartes had wondered if the world around him was in fact controlled in its most minute detail by an ‘Evil Genius’. The capital letters are his, not mine. Could there be a grand conspiracy?
But when all the philosophising is complete, it’s still hard to find evidence for a mass conspiracy, despite the best efforts of The X Files, Lost and 24. Ah, the elegant imprecision of American television!
Until you head off to the supermarket to buy mozzarella, that is.
It’s equally disappointing and shameful that this traditional art of Italian cheese making has been so corrupted. Mozzarella, in its true form, is a snowy white, delicious, soft and subtle cheese, with layers of flavour and history. The taut, insipid, and rubbery banana-yellow mass ranged in supermarket chillers is a far cry from the intent of the Neapolitan masters who first crafted their artisan offering.
The traditional cheese is made from the milk of water buffalo, brought to southern Italy in the early medieval period. It is cooked, cut off into pieces (mozzare in Italian), then stretched by hand into shapes. It is a technique typical of the ancient world where it originated. But these slow speed talents couldn’t keep pace in a larger modern world, so mozzarella was re-imagined.
Today, mass-manufacture machines whirr and buzz, chopping and stretching curds until they have mozzarella-ish qualities. But in truth, this is mere pizza cheese, not mozzarella. The only thing it shares with its heritage it the goopiness, known as melt distance.
That said, there is an argument that modern pizza cheese is the central element that has allowed for the diversification of the pizza industry. It made cheese cheaper, more stable, and able to be shipped great distances. True mozzarella is a fresh cheese with only days of shelf life.
But for all the convenience, I’ll still take a slice of history over the contemporary facsimile. Bocconcini, fior di latte, treccine, mozzarella di buffala. Any of these will do. Put these in the hands of a genius pizza maker (evil or otherwise) and you’ll spend the rest of the night philosophising about the ‘Meaning of Slice’.
Pizza Margherita