Pizza and kitchen: we’ve made contact!
03-11-2015
Corrado Assenza and Heinz Beck with some of the pizza chefs who participated in the first day of PizzaUp 2015
«The great Expo heritage for Italy? The chance to create here a great hub of food knowledge. We can become the centre of knowledge applied to food, wine and nutrition», philosopher Salvatore Veca, coordinator of the workgroup that led to the birth of Carta di Milano told me a few days ago. These words resounded in my mind in Vighizzolo d’Este, during the first day – just ended – of PizzaUp 2015.
The festival today goes beyond its initial borders and has become the kernel of skills and experiments, a maieutic occasion for all that regards pizza. In fact, more than that: the horizon has widened up, the borders blown away, so much so that Chiara Quaglia confided how the same format will be more inclusive in the future, «how can we leave chefs out of the symposium? They’ve become co-protagonists in this world».
Heinz Beck presents his special types of dough together with his collaborator Giovanni Solofra. In the middle, Francesca Barberini
A very significant episode, come to think about it, because it involved – each one starting from his point of view – the celebrated chef who understands how cuisine cannot exclude new pizza and the nervy pizza-chef who understands how new pizza cannot avoid merging with the kitchen. Yet it was not a conflict. The troops are different, but are allies today. The debate – this is the right word – occurred when Beck stopped the delay as he wanted to enter deep into the others’ camp. People expected from him a speech on toppings in gourmet pizza: a chef’s topic, indeed. Yet the German seemingly innocent chef did not stop there: «I thought not about what can end on the pizza, but inside the pizza». That is to say the dough. Everyone remained with a bated breath.
The four pizzas tasted at the end of the day
Piero Gabrieli with Heinz Beck
This was an enlightening sparkle of technical yet almost anthropological dialectics: considerations of two professionals who trained in two parallel universes with a thousand interconnecting points: they discussed methodological details influenced by their respective experience, but with a common objective, and finally speaking in the same language. This is (the merit of) PizzaUp.
by
journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief
Territory and the new Italian pizza
Three super-chefs for PizzaUp 2015