PIZZA: With Mortadella or Ham and Figs?

That is the question, Shakespeare would say. I have a love affair with pizza… let’s say it’s a kind of ‘bread and love and carbohydrates’, Julia Roberts would answer in search of happiness through the alleys of Rome in the movie “Eat, Pray, Love”. Let’s escape the melancholy of the end of summer by following the scent of history and street food!

Julia Roberts in a scene from “Eat, Pray, Love”

Here is the solution: the two emblems of “Roman style” street food based on white pizza. Simply, the oldest street food in the capital. Hot, oily, and salty on the surface, it can be enjoyed wrapped in brown paper. We have been eating it with gusto for 2000 years and it will forever be the street food preferred by tourists: with the “mortazza“, the Roman mortadella, and with ham and figs.

Pizza ham and figs [picture: Twitter @TrastevereRM]

Romulus and Remus suckled by the She-Wolf by Peter Paul Rubens (Capitoline Museums)

Original from Western Asia, the fig has become a symbol of the city of Rome. It is said that the word Rome derives from “ruma”, or breast, that of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus. The fig tree, under which this event occurred, was therefore called ficus ruminalis, “breastfeeding fig”. On the slopes of the Palatine Hill, next to this tree with its milky fruit, stood the temple of Rumina, the protector goddess of breastfeeding women.

Figs

Pizza and figs were a poor September dish already for the Ancient Romans. Crushed bread picked along the streets of the Capital of the Empire, was everywhere to be found. Try pizza, ham, and figs on the street in late summer, when the fruits are ripe. It’s a snack, it’s a brunch, it’s the perfect combination of sweet and savoury, the freshness of fruit and the warmth of freshly baked pizza. A poem, not just pizza and figs!

Pizza with mortadella

It’s on everyone’s lips, and it’s another street food made in Rome complete with #mortazza. A real institution that competes with pizza, ham, and figs to end your Roman holidays in the best possible way. The pizza is always the white Roman one, soft on top and crunchy on the bottom, but it is stuffed with slices of mortadella!

Mortadella also seems to have been born already in Roman times, between Emilia Romagna and Lazio. The pork was minced with a mortar and then stuffed into sausages and flavoured with spices, especially myrtle. For pizza with mortazza, tradition dictates mortadella with pistachios.

The poster of the film “La Mortadella”

In 1971 even Mario Monicelli dedicated a film to “La mortadella“, in which Maddalena (Sophia Loren) does not want to part with it on the journey to New York where she will meet her boyfriend, Michele (Gigi Proietti). Today we can’t separate it from the white pizza, because it’s delicious!

Have we managed to escape the melancholy of the end-of-summer?