Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #04 (2016)
Written by James Tynion IV
Artwork by Freddie E. Williams II
Colors by Jeremy Colwell
Chef’s Note: Happy National Pepperoni Pizza Day!
What, exactly, is pepperoni? It is an air-dried spicy sausage with a few distinctive characteristics: it is fine-grained, lightly smoky, bright red and relatively soft. But one thing it is not: Italian.
“Purely an Italian-American creation, like chicken Parmesan,” said John Mariani, a food writer and historian who has just published a book with the modest title: “How Italian Food Conquered the World.” “Peperoni” is the Italian word for large peppers, as in bell peppers, and there is no Italian salami called by that name, though some salamis from Calabria and Apulia are similarly spicy and flushed red with dried chilies. The first reference to pepperoni in print is from 1919, Mr. Mariani said, the period when pizzerias and Italian butcher shops began to flourish here.
I find that the majority of Italian food based pride is absurd. The infamous rage over pineapple on pizza, for example. The claim is that pizza is only to be made with traditional Italian ingredients is utterly ridiculous, since nearly all modern Italian fare comes with tomato based sauces, yet tomatoes aren’t native to Italy. They only came into Italian cuisine after they were brought to Europe from South America, and peperoni being from the Americas just furthers that same issue. No, any time anyone wants to tell me what I can and can’t eat in my “Italian meals” they can take a nice big slice of Ham and Pineapple pizza, and shove it down their gullet with a stick of pep as if they were packing a musket.