Pizza quattro stagioni
The pizza parade continues unabated chez Hedonia. For those of you who do not have your own personal pizzaiolo in the house, I highly recommend it.
Lately I’ve been asking forcing DPaul to make pizza quattro stagioni, “four seasons” pizza. Typically the toppings are prosciutto, artichokes, mushrooms and olives, and they are arranged into quadrants. Presumably each ingredient represents an ingredient, though I’m not confident I know which would be which. Artichokes I guess are for spring, and olives the winter. Mushrooms are certainly more prevalent in Italian food in the winter. So prosciutto is somehow summer, by process of elimination. Or maybe not.
The same four ingredients are used for pizza capricciosa, only they’re haphazardly strewn about the top instead of arranged so fastidiously. I would not inflict this on poor DPaul, who doesn’t care for fully half the toppings. In fact, I’ll stop making him make this pizza now.
During one of our visits in Rome, we had dinner at a local pizzeria with my family. This was where we first had quattro stagioni. However, as well as the standard four ingredients, the pizza came with a egg baked sunny side up in the center of the pizza. This is somewhat common there, but I couldn’t help noticing that it threw off the pizza math. I pointed to the egg and remarked, “il quinto stagioni” — the fifth season.
And before you get weirded out about the egg on a pizza thing, consider this: Breakfast pizza!
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I was fortunate enough to have been served DPaul’s pizza quattro stagioni and I can tell you it was delicious! He really knows how to make pizza. The crust was superb. There was only one problem with the pizza …. it went too fast. 🙂
One of the reasons I want a new stove is so I can make pizza. (Can’t fit a pizza stone in my toaster oven!) Your pizza looks perfect!
Looks like a perfect pizza to me. Nice work!
I’m going to guess artichokes = spring, olives = summer, mushrooms = fall, prosciutto = winter. Can’t wait to try your pizze this weekend! 🙂
The pizza looks beautiful. Poor DPaul being forced into pizza duty, but lucky you!
Here’s my guess: mushrooms fall, artichokes winter (in Italy their season is October to March), cooked ham spring and olives summer
Capricciosa, literally means “naughty” – or badly behaved, mischieveous, fickle – cause those ingredients are all mixed up, jumping all about the place.
But not quite the same : the mushrooms and the artcihokes ar “sott’olio” – canned – not fresh and Mozzarella instead of ham
I didn't realize artichokes had such a different season in Italy, as our climates are so similar. Here in California, we typically get two seasons for them: Spring and fall.