I have had the privilege of living across Europe for extended periods not merely as a passing tourist, but a resident with the very same quotidian quandaries as the typical neighborhood. What it endows you with is a really genuine notion of what tends to make these persons tick, their joys and sorrows, highs and lows.
My time in Italy, amongst many lessons, taught me this large one: handful of populations about the planet know how to definitely love life like the Italians do. Of course, when I say Italians, I am generalising, but let’s not get pedantic. La dolce vita is not just a cliché here—they not only know how to extract joy from each and every aspect of life, but know how to do it with a specific flair for the dramatic and extravagant. Food, style, quickly automobiles, they do not just do items for subsistence, it all comes loaded with flavour. From a standard pasta recipe to a very simple village wine, anything gets infused with a specific life-enriching shot of vivacity.
So when the Italian ambassador invited me for a socially-distanced World Pizza Day party, I knew we had been in for a veritable treat. The evening itself was absolutely nothing ostentatious—it was just pizzas and Prosecco in the park with an Indo-Italian fusion concert for company—and however in spite of all the distancing measures, it by no means after felt lacking in exciting or interaction.
The standard Neapolitan pizza is an art, one that was lately recognised by Unesco as a heritage unto itself, so now there are requirements to be maintained if you want to contact one so. Thankfully, we have areas in Delhi which will dish out a correct pie, which comes as close to the original as my Neapolitan-shouldered bespoke jackets do. Diva, Da Susy and Leo’s—three go-to addresses spread across the NCR will have you covered for the genuine stuff.
These are not pizzas which come loaded with a further pizza-worth of toppings. It requires only 90 seconds to cook one in a standard wood-fired oven, so do not potter about—stay there and watch it come with each other. The Italian chef at the JW Marriott Sahar in Mumbai after taught me that if you get thirsty right after consuming a pizza then it wasn’t fermented ideal. This evening, I was thirsty for some excellent Prosecco, but for completely distinctive motives.
And then, considering that it ain’t an Italian party till we have ice cream, there was correct hand-churned all-organic gelato by Venezia Italian Artisan ice cream at hand. For a nation that almost tops the world’s charts for ice cream consumption, the Italians have performed to this humble cup what Giuseppe Verdi (and several just before him) did to music. The creamy folds of a very simple vanilla ice cream had been sheer soothing joy post a pizza binge, but it was not all. Lavazza, the Italian coffee brand, had set up just apart from, so a distinctive type of fusion entailed—one which involved pouring a shot of fresh espresso more than a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The purity and simplicity of this is what tends to make it such an immediate classic. It’s named an affogato and it is equal components dessert and caffe.
Sadly for me, all my time in Italy I possibly lived with a strange set of purists who by no means introduced me to this but, in their defence, they also protected me from ending up possessing a pizza with pineapple on it.
Back to this fabulous party in the park, I walked away nonetheless humming the bars of Con Te Partiro, the taste of prosciutto and parmigiano nonetheless on the back of my palate, whilst coffee and creamy vanilla created up the more instant linger. It was like finding to taste la dolce vita in the time of a pandemic. Grazie mille to His Excellency Vincenzo de Luca and the whole group at the Italian embassy who place this with each other.
Now, if a person could inform me if there is an upcoming World Pasta Day too…
The writer is a sommelier