Fish pizza

By Bob Fretwell, 20 February 2007

[Editor’s note: this was Bob’s humorous response to our opt-in email newsletter which was about strange pizza toppings we’d encountered.]

Spinach, cauliflower, carrot? My favourite type! (Yuck!)

Here in Andalucía (except in the cities, where a whole range is available) generally we are stuck with just two types: the ones with just cheese and tomato paste, which I guess would be the Spanish equivalent of the universal Margherita… and the ones with fish! You can have them with tuna, or with caballa (which tastes surprisingly like tuna when “pizzarised”) or ask for them without tuna (and you’ll get caballa!).

Recently frozen pizzas have become available in supermarkets and even in our small shops here in Pruna and the choice is thus extended. However, the best way to eat pizzas here is to make your own. Frozen bases are available for the less adventurous.

We have been spoiled by our time in America who make (apologies to all Italians and Italian pizza lovers) simply the best. Their spicy meat based pizzas are to die for and I don’t have to suffer the “over-crispy crust” foibles of the Spanish, whose crusts are so crispy that they shatter when you bite or cut them. However, when we make our own we can have just what we want on them (and get the topping right to the edge, unlike the majority of Italian pizzas which have acres of untopped crust around them)

As a comment on the fish tastes of the Spanish, here in Andalucía it is just about impossible to buy any savoury pastry dish that doesn’t contain tuna or something that tastes the same. In shops you can see trays of interesting looking empanadas in many varieties of shape, but unfortunately no variety of filling! I understand that in the east of Spain (Alicante and around) that there are available many varieties of meat-filled pastry, but here we are stuck with tuna.