Pizza Every Features and What to Know

Every continent's got its own signature pizza and today we figure out which one is the best. Welcome back to Mythical Kitchen where hey, good news, man. We're going on a global adventure and you don't need a suitcase. You don't need a real ID. You do need you do need a passport and you don't need to take your shoes off anymore. But since it's international, you need to inexplicably put all of your toiletries into a clear bag. But it's never clear where the clear bags are. So you're running around, you're like, I don't know how to say where the clear bag. Anyways, all you need is a slice of saw because today we are making pizza from every single continent on the globe.

Now, we've done this before with fried chicken and dumplings and noodles. Frankly, this is my favorite thing to do because pizza specifically is the most popular food in the entire world. I think you can tell the entire history of the globe using pizza as your story book. And that's what we intend to do today. And thanks to our friends at Gazny, we have a state-of-the-art pizza oven to help us make all of these. This is going to be an incredible day. You get a pizza. You get a pizza. It's a pizza party. Everyone bring up no racist here. Only pizza parties. But there's pizza.

Uh well, first up, we are starting with I mean the quintessential pizza that launched all modern pizzas. We're in Europe, of course. We are in Naples in Italy and this is the margarita pizza. This is credited to pizzolo Raphael Esposito in 1889 at Pizzeria Brandy. But the history is a lot more complicated and dubious than that. Before we get to that though, here's how I made it. We're using double zero flour here that we actually imported straight from Italy. For the dough, I combined water and yeast and then added about 15% of the flour and then whisked it up into a smooth paste. Then I added the salt and combined that too. I added the remaining flour until a shaggy dough formed and I let that rest

for about 10 minutes. After the dough rested, I then kneaded that for about 20 minutes. And then I let it rest at room temperature overnight. For the sauce, I crushed some really good San Marcano DOP tomatoes by hand and then simply seasoned it with salt. To make the pizza margarita, first I spooned on a thin layer of the raw tomato sauce, just a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt, and some fresh torn mozzarella. Time to bake this pizza off in our new Gausny Arc XL. The oven did such a great job baking this pizza. It's got that perfect leopard spotted char that you just can't get in a conventional oven in your home. Now, I'm going to top it with a drizzle of our nice olive oil. A quick pass with a

microplane of parm and some fresh torn basil leaves. I'm going to get into the history of this, but I need to eat this while it's still hot. This is so perfect. This Oh, you're also traditionally Neapolitan pizza. It's supposed to be quite floppy in the middle. You see ours got a little bit of flop to it, but it's got some structure. This is a little bit of an Americanized version cuz traditional Neapolitan pizzas, they don't even cut. They just serve it to you whole and you cut it with a knife and fork. And that just kind of um doesn't work with my American barbaric sensibilities. Medispia, Italia. Bye.

Their football team hasn't made a World Cup in like 12 years. It's They're struggling out there right now. I'm so sorry. Let's give it a try. I mean, look at the bottom of that. That beautiful char. Like, this is to me it's such a simple pizza and it's simple by design. And there is literally the governing agency called the Association Vera Pizza Napoleana that defines what a Neapolitan pizza can and can't be. I've written down the rules. Hold on. I got to go consult. Ingredients. The dough must only contain four ingredients. Wheat flour, type0ero, check. Water, salt, and yeast. No fats or sugars are allowed. Toppings are

strictly defined. Eg. San Marzarzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella or fior de latte, extravirgin olive oil, and fresh basil. Preparation. The dough must be mixed to precise ratios. 40 to 60 g of salt and.1 to 3 g fresh yeast per liter of water. Salt and yeast cannot touch for more than 5 minutes. There is an incredible amount of rules here and that is something that Italy does that is very unique that has led to them having some of the best traditional pies in the world. The funny thing is that this is all hinged on a lie. I mentioned that this is credited to Raphael Esposito in 1889. So many people know the story.

This is called the margarita pizza named after Queen Margarita because uh the colors of the Italian flag are green, white, and red. And he made this uh pizza specifically for her on a visit to Naples. However, the pizza de mozzarella with basil and tomatoes on it, this has been around since at least the 1850s. You can like see mentions of this. Not only that, the original pizzeria that made this in 1889 has a supposed note that is signed by Queen Margarita's court thanking them for the pizza and it is almost 100% just a forgery. However, the myth is so good that it was written down and Naples really is the birthplace of modern pizza. You can trace a lot of these flatbreads back to the ancient Greeks

and ancient Romans. We've actually made some of them here on this show. When we're talking about modern pizza, Naples is where it all originated. And I'm not even talking about like greater Italy. I'm talking about Naples specifically because it was part of like the Habsburgs. It was part of the Bourbons. It was part of the Kingdom of Two Sicilles. And Italy wasn't united until Gabaldi's ride in 1861, I believe it was. But by that point, Naples had gone through this massive explosion, right? It went from 200,000 people in 1700 to almost half a million people by 1800. And there had been so much instability that it ended up becoming like one of the poorest, most crowded cities in all

of Europe. And to feed the poor, they were called the Lzeroni, uh which actually is like meant relating to Lazarus cuz they were wearing tattered clothes. To feed the poor, people would set up wood burning ovens and they would throw dough in there, top it with tomatoes, which were pretty damn new and pretty localized to southern Italy. The people who did know about pizza outside of Naples actually saw it as a very lowclass thing. Uh Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code, went to Naples and said that it looked like bread that had been drugged through the sewers. Uh and a lot of that came from, you know, sort of classist revelations about how they felt about southern Italians. But enter Queen Margarita and King Ombberto.

Ironically, the type of tomato used on the first Neapolitan pizza was likely called Rembberto tomatoes after the king. um they were making a visit during a big collar outbreak in Naples. Uh and so for Queen Margarita to even eat pizza in Naples was seen as sort of a big gesture of supplication at the time. And so if we're then looking at this pizza from 1889, even though it was actually in the 1850s, the largest ever voluntary migration of people out of one country was Italy in between 1880 and 1920 where 13 million Italians left. And so they mostly southern Italians took things like this Neapolitan style of pizza and ended up all over the world. But this the charred dough, the tomato sauce,

the cheese. This is like the original. And I don't know if it gets any better than this. This is like this is truly a modern wonder of the world. It's so chewy. Okay, real quick. I want to give a proper shout out to Gazny because the Arc XL has been the unsung hero of this entire episode. Every single pizza you'll watch us make today from different continents and with completely different styles has come out of this thing. And that's why I wanted it for this video specifically. We needed something versatile enough to handle a proper Neapolitan, a stuffed pizza, a flatbread, and even what we're

doing for Antarctica. You'll see without me having to make any major adjustments between every cook. We'd actually been planning on doing this episode for a long time, but we never did it because we never had a proper pizza oven. I mean, you've seen us make pizzas in here before, but like what you haven't seen is the amount of steps that we have to go through. We've been pulling our pizzas out of our normal conventional oven that never actually get a crispy bottom and we'll like try and throw it in a pan and we'll try and throw it on broil. It sucks. We could have just had a Gaussy Arc XL this entire time. And look at how beautiful it made all these pies. Like the only reason I go out to

eat anymore is if a place is cooking a food that I flat out don't know how to make or don't have the expertise for or more commonly a place that has a piece of equipment that I don't have. But now with the Gazni like you can truly make restaurant quality pizzas at home and not only that you can really experiment with it and you can play with it. It's super easy and intuitive. You put the pizza in. You can actually see where the crust starts to leopard spot. You see where the cheese starts to bubble. You turn it. It's such a fun, hands-on interactive process, and that actually makes you appreciate the pizza more. That's something I believe in so strongly. What surprised me is how intuitive it is once it's up to

temperature. You're just cooking. The heat is consistent, the results are there, and it looks great in a backyard setup, too. If you've been thinking about getting into outdoor cooking properly, which you definitely should be, this is truly worth the look. So, head to the link in the description to check out the full range of ovens. Now, on to North America. Hey, that's here. Whoa. Okay, so they say that pizza was invented in Italy, but it was made popular by America. So, we're going over to North America. And listen, we thought about doing a big floppy New York pepperoni pie. But then we all remembered that Hawaiian pizza exists.

And then we all remembered that it was invented in Canada, and we said, "Hell yeah, that's North America." And how often do we get to feature Canadian food? So, this is the Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple. Allegedly, again, allegedly, invented by Sam Ponopoulos at the Satellite restaurant in Chadam, Ontario in 1962. We'll get to the allegedly later. All of these pizzas are simply so alleged, it reads like a freaking court document. But first, here's how I made it. For the dough, I whisked together the salt and pizza flour, and then I bloomed my yeast and sugar by whisking both into approximately 100°ree water. Once the yeast started to wake up, I added my salted pizza flour in the bowl of the stand mixer and then added the yeast

mixture. I brought the dough together with a spatula and then I forgot to add the attachment like an idiot. But then I added it and then I kneaded it for about eight minutes in the stand mixer. I let the dough proof at room temperature for about an hour. Then I portioned it into three even dough balls. I put it into my oiled up proof box and just a kiss of oil on top. Then it's off to the fridge overnight. While the dough is fermenting, I made my sauce by heating olive oil and blooming the chili flakes and garlic. Then I smushed the tomatoes with my hands in a bowl. This is truly my favorite part. You got to hand crush the tomatoes. I added the tomatoes and basil and I seasoned the

sauce to taste with a little bit of salt and sugar. I prep my toppings by slicing some juicy pineapple, adding a little salt and oil and then roasting it. This is unconventional, but I fully stand by this. And then I shred it for that perfect bite. Then I sliced some fresh jalapenos and green onions, too. I'll I'll get to why I did the toppings the way that I did. Give me a second. Then I rolled out the dough and I built my pizza with the sauce, a thin layer of cheese, hamone berico, I stand by it, roasted pineapple, and jalapenos. I cut and garnished my pizza with hot honey and some fresh green onions. And now I know what you're saying, Josh, Hawaiian pizza is already an abomination

of pizza. If you showed the people that made this Neapolitan pizza pineapple on pizza, they would flip their lid. Which is why I say, why not take it even further? That's kind of the beauty of North American pizza is that it was iterated upon so many times. And you'll actually see that the dough is like significantly thicker and heavier. This pizza is literally three times the weight as this pizza right here. And that's for some very specific reasons regarding the machinery that I'll get to. But first, I have to take a bite of this. I have to get that proper ham. This is just a fantasy pizza for me. I love pineapple on pizza. I grew up eating it.

It tastes like freedom. You know what I mean? Like it really I hear I see the B-roll of the bald eagle, but I hear the screech of the hawk because it sounded more like an eagle than an eagle does. And even though this is Canadian, somehow it tastes more American than anything American. San Panopoulos, who was a Greek Canadian restaurant operator, claims that he invented this pizza because he was inspired by the Canadian Chinese cuisine at the time in the 60s. I say allegedly because Sam Ponopoulos was a Greek Canadian restaurant owner that claims to have invented this pizza because he was inspired by the sweet and savory combinations of Chinese Canadian food at the time. And the brand of canned pineapple that he was using was called

Hawaiian brand. However, and this is thanks to Scott Weiner of Scott's Pizza Tours on his blog found a restaurant menu from 1957 from a Portland-based pizza restaurant called Jungle Pizza that had Hawaiian pizza on the menu that had not only pineapple, but papaya and green pepper on it. So, the original Hawaiian pizza maybe canonically did not even have ham or Canadian bacon or whatever you want to call it on it, but it actually had green pepper. So, we threw some jalapenos on there. And not only that, one of our local pizzeras in Los Angeles. Shout out to Baronis in Sherman Oaks or Van Eyes, depending on how you view the lines. They claim to have invented the Hawaiian pizza in

1954. But with so many of these, anybody who claims to have invented it is likely lying. Somebody once put pineapple on a pizza, they told a friend, they told a friend, and then that now ended up on the Domino's menu. What I think is more interesting than who specifically invented it is how this like thicker pizza that tends to be baked at a lower temperature. We lowered the gazni to be able to cook this all the way through and didn't want to get it as charred as that is all of the new technology that was going on in America. There were two there were two pieces of technology that were invented that allowed us to massproduce pizzas. And a lot of this is paraphrased from William Alexander's

fantastic book 10 Tomatoes That Changed the World. It kind of inspired the tomato tattoo that I got. Uh but anyways, there was the Hobart mixer that allowed people to just mix hundreds of pounds of dough at one time. And then there was actually the uh gas powered deck ovens, mostly made by Bakers Pride, uh that allowed people to fire so many pizzas at once. But what they sort of gained in efficiency, they lost in some of the beautiful uh texture that pizza has had throughout the years. This pizza was allegedly invented in 1962, but let's put it somewhere in the '50s. And that's when pizza really started to boom in America. What a lot of people say is that there were American GIs that were

stationed in Italy, part of the Axis powers. Yeah, I'm talking about World War II again. Sue me. And then they developed a taste for pizza and came back. It kind of doesn't really add up though because there weren't that many GI stationed in Italy and certainly not enough to open the thousands of pizzeras that happened. What was more likely is that after World War II, there was a big housing boom and you had a bunch of soldiers coming back on the GI Bill and there was a big mass migration of people outside the neighborhoods that they grew up in. So you had a ton of Italian Americans who again their family likely immigrated there sometime in between 1880 and 1920 and suddenly they were now

spreading out across not only America but also Canada. And they were bringing pizza along with a new spirit of experimentation. As far as I'm concerned, the Hawaiian pizza, don't know if it was invented in Canada. Don't know if this is authentic pizza, but to me, this is such a beautiful, cool part of history. And frankly, it tastes like my childhood. Cheers. Now, I don't know if you know this, but there's two different America. Well, there's like kind of two and a half. Central America, I think. We kind of Anyways, we're going to South America right now, and there are a lot of different pizzas we could have chosen. And frankly, this was a close call at the end. We were going to do fugetta

from Argentina, but then we remembered that pizza comrango piri exists in Brazil. This was invented in Sao Paulo in the 1970s. And I think this actually really sort of mirrors the arc of pizza in North America as well. Before we get to that, here's how we made it. For the dough, I use the same New York style dough that I used for the Hawaiian pizza. For the chicken or Franco despiato, I'm I'm so sorry to all the Brazilian fans. I am I wish I could even say sorry in Brazilian Portuguese and I simply cannot. I sauteed onions, garlic, and fire roasted tomatoes until they began to soften. Then I went in with the shredded chicken and herbs. I really wanted this to cook down into a

spreadable base. Once the franco despiat was done, it was time to build our pizza. I rolled out an extra-lar dough. Then I added a layer of mozzarella at the bottom and then topped that moss with our beautiful frano despiato. Then a nice big lace of katu piri. It's a delicious processed cheese that is the absolute star of the show. Then it was time to bake it off in the Gazny Arc XL. Once it was finished baking, I topped the pizza with some fancy oregano and cut into it to enjoy. And now it's time to eat. I'm I'm so stoked on this. We have never made anything like this in this kitchen. This is so awesome. But

when we saw the name Katupiri, I remembered making it actually for Barbie Fera's you like that Brazilian. I'm so sorry. We made it for Barbie Ferrer's last meal. Um and we'd never had it before. It's such an awesome product. It's so creamy and it's like delightfully processed. I can't wait to try this. Look at that. That's beautiful. I'm so It's so creamy. It's like so familiar yet so completely foreign to me. It's It's so awesome. Like I imagine somebody from Brazil, not even from Italy, would see this Hawaiian pizza and be like pineapple and ham and jalapeno, spicy pepper. Like

yeah, that's like kind of similar to what we would have in the same way that I look at this. I'm like, yeah, I've had of course chicken on pizza and you know, we'll put fun little cream cheeses on pizza. Hell, I've had a smoked salmon pizza with cream cheese, but it's completely different. These are like reciprocal mirrors of each other. And man, if you look at that wave of Italian immigration, 13 million people left Italy 1880 to 1920, right? 4 million of them went to America. Um that's how we got the show The Sopranos. You've seen it. Uh but like a lot of them went to South America as well. You look at Uruguay, you look at uh Argentina and even Brazil. And so Sa Paulo had a majority or at least a big

plurality of the Italian immigrants. So, Sao Paulo actually has a pizzeria that has been operating for more than 100 years continuously there. Like pizzeras were popping up in Brazil and Sa Paulo in the 1910s. That's about when they started in the US. US might have beaten them by about 10 years, but you like really see the Sa Paulo New York tradition kind of explode out of each other. Brazil though has us beat when it comes to how experimental they are with their pizzas. So, Brazil has these restaurants that are called Dude, I just like how many Brazilian Portuguese speakers you know?

Zero. Zero, right? You know, I just don't know how to pronounce the letters. Island. There's a guy on Love Island. I know mostly the R is different. Anyways, there's these restaurants. We grew up going to like shuhasaras, right? We get Brazilian steakouses. They walk around with the meat, they slice it off. But there are also versions of that in Brazil called, I believe, either rodicios or hodicios where they walk around with 30 different kinds of pizza and you tell them what you want and what you don't. They have a whole litany of sweet pizzas. In Brazil, they have homeo a julieta. I believe Romeo and Juliet

it's guava paste in cheese. But what I think makes this really unique is this katupiri cheese. So katupiri cheese talking about these mirrors of like America and Brazil and their food culture. This is a processed cheese that is emulsified. So, this is like a cream cheese that we baked so hot. The oven was up to like 800 degrees and it didn't melt. It didn't denature. It didn't move. It stayed creamy like this because it had emulsifying salts added to it, which would have been a very new technology at the time. So, Katupiri was invented about a couple hours drive from Sa Paulo in 1911, which I think beats craft American cheese by about 5 years. And it's about at the same time that in

Switzerland, the chemist named Gerber was basically inventing uh the whole industry of processed cheese. Pizza Kumrango Eatupiri is allegedly the fourth most ordered pizza combination in Sao Paula right now. And I absolutely get why this is just like such a beautiful representation of, you know, this is like the original Pikachu and then these are the evolved versions, you know, but like one got like a little messed up along the way, you know, and I'm not saying who's. Uh, but this is just like such a cool pizza. It's so creamy. It's comforting yet also like challenging in a way. I don't know, man. These are like the reasons I love food.

Next up, we are traveling to the largest continent on Earth. We're going to Asia. And now, there were too many pizzas to choose from. There's a lot of really fun Japanese stuff going on in the fast food pizza world. There's a lot of traditional Japanese Neapolitan pizza. However, I wanted to make something that I actually grew up eating. This is called, well, Armenian pizza on some menus in Southern California, uh, but generally called either Lakma Jun or Lakma Joe in Armenia. I'll tell you how I made it. First, I made a thin lavage dough that I actually leavened with yeast. Some lavage doughs aren't leavened with yeast, but then I mixed it with water, olive oil, and sugar. That

oil is going to give this dough a nice structure, a little bit similar to a tortilla. I added salt to my dough, and then I combined the yeast mixture with the flour. Once nice and combined, I let the dough rest for 10 minutes at room temp. I then rolled the balls out into super thin discs. Next, I par baked that lavage. I don't want too much color on it yet because I'm throwing this into the gazni next. Next, I prepped the spice meat mixture for the top. Onions, garlic, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, Aleppo pepper, parsley, and then added some salt to a blender just until the big chunks were gone. I then added a bunch of pepper and salt to the ground beef

and combined that tomato mixture into my meat by massaging it all together with my hands until it was a very wet, loose paste. Once I was ready to bake, I spread a thin layer of that meat mixture onto the lavage and then fired it off into the Gaussy Arc XL on a little pizza pan. I drizzled a little olive oil before topping with fresh parsley and served with a lemon wedge that you got to get all around there. This one goes out to the gym homie Matt Nazarian aka the tall Armenian. He drives around to LA and he just vlogs himself eating the best Lochman June and it's really the best content that you can find anywhere.

Uh we're going to take this. Traditionally, you would roll it up. Some people might put a sort of salad or yogurt sauce in there. Some people might throw some uh some souk in there. But to me, just roll this bad boy up. I took too big of a bite. We are in the continent of Asia and now there's kind of a bit of a debate of like is Armenia Asian? Is it European? Some people consider it culturally European because it is a primarily Christian nation, but geographically it does lie in Southwest Asia. There is so much history in that region that frankly like a lot of it developed before national borders did. There is

potentially a claim that Lakma Jun goes back all the way to pre-Christian Armenia. Some people think that the initial lam and in June uh means meat and dough uh in Arabic although that was likely used by Armenian traders to market to Arabic speaking people. But a lot of people think that the original Armenian meat dough mixture was potentially uh used as a sacrifice to the goddess Anita because Anita was a pre-Christian uh goddess of the hearth and the home infertility. So they think this was initially made with hepher meat that was spread on lavash which was again considered sacred cuz it was truly like the bread of life. But like everything, I mean, this has gone through so many different myths and

iterations. And Armenia is also a huge diasporic culture. There's a fair amount of dispute on where this was actually invented. As we talked about, like nobody can lay claim to being the first person to spread meat on dough in bake it. Uh there is actually an Armenian restaurant in Russia that uh said that Lakmun was Armenian. And then a lot of people in Turkey got mad because they also make Lakmun in Turkey. Uh, and Lakmun is a Turk Arabic word. You look at the native Armenian word for this and it is likely translated to misalos. There's actually two things that go by the name Armenian pizza at least in the restaurants that I frequent. There's lakajun and you can see the similarities. But then there's also a

jarski or a jarian kajapuri uh which is like a call a boatshaped round of dough that has egg and cheese and butter in the middle. And so Lakmanjun didn't get really popular until the 1960s. And a lot of people think that it came from Armenian diaspora traders in Syria looping back around to Armenia, then coming over to LA because a lot of Armenians got displaced during the genocide in the 19s and early 1920s. And then now Lakmun is exported all over the world with Armenian restaurants. And then you can even see it in other cultures in Lebanon. They call this linen. Uh, but either way, you spread a delicious spiced meat paste onto a flatbread, crank that in a super hot oven, and this is just like such a

delightful treat. And also shows how local communities use the popularity of pizza to market a food that this really might be like a thousand plus years old, depending on what history you believe. All sort of made possible through the power of pizza. That's the airplane that we're on. That's the sound that airplanes make in my head. I think I have a something's missed my Anyways, we're going from Asia to Africa and we are making a Moroccan pizza that is called Medfuna or Tabad if you're talking in the native Berber language, which I knew. I knew minoring in um Amaz. That's a lie. I just know that from a Max Miller video where he actually went to Morocco and made this. Well, I'm

going to show you how we made it. To make the dough, I combined the yeast, sugar, and warm water and let it stand for 5 minutes. To the yeast mixture, I added in the flour, salt, and olive oil until a shaggy dough formed. I kneaded that dough for about 8 minutes and let the dough rise for an hour or so in a greased bowl. After 1 hour, I turned out my dough and rolled two large dough balls, which I let rest again. Now, while those rested, I made the filling by heating some olive oil and cooking down onions and bell peppers. Once those began to soften, I add the garlic, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. I let the spices bloom for about 5 minutes before adding in my ground lamb. And

this smelled so freaking good, I can't even describe it. On top of one of the discs, I put a heaping pile of lamb filling, leaving only about an inch from the edge. Then I sandwiched the other rolled out dough on top of that filling, carefully sealing and crimping the edge of the dough. And this pizza is simply going ungarnished cuz traditionally you would have either taken this off the hot coals and a lot of people would actually like scrape some of the burnt bits off with a knife or if there's any char dug out of an earthn oven. This is really cool since the Berbers or the Amaz people which is refers to a lot of different nomadic people like the Tuare eggs included in the Maghreb and Sahara

deserts. I actually didn't know that Berber was like an outsider term and it actually comes from the term barbarian. Um, but anyways, the Amaz people would make the dough in the morning and then they would carry it with them throughout their daily activities and then for their midday meal they would stop when the dough had actually risen and then they would either cook it over coals uh depending on what region of the desert you were in or actually bury it under the sand. But again, like look how beautiful this came out of that Gausny. Man, this is just so charred, so delicious. Grab a slice. Look.

Damn, dude. Dude, that just got to check out under the hood right there. Oh snap. Oh, this is awesome. And listen, like there's a fair amount of like double crust pizzas that exist. Like, you know, I know American uh stuffed pizzas, the Fukuseta from Argentina, but like this is so cool because I mean this is something that is like it's basically like an indigenous dish. This is awesome. And again, like this predates what we call pizza, but the fact that it's been marketed as Berber pizza shows the power of pizza. That's so good. This is my favorite I've tried so far. It doesn't have dissimilar spicing profiles from the lomajun. So I think you're probably in a lot of the same trade rats and there are a lot

of like similar warming spices. It's so reolent of that char that like really dude you got so much from that gazy oven. I mean we didn't have access to a giant sand dune and a bunch of coals to bury this in but I think the gazny arc gave it like the best shot. This is such a delight. This is a dish that I have never had. I've had a fair amount of Moroccan food, uh, but never this dish specifically. This is just like really special, man. I got nothing snarky or cheeky to say. This is just a treat. Now, the final continent, the ever dreaded Oceanania, where we go, God, surely there's got to be something to come out of an island or Australia or

New Zealand. And now this one, it's not exactly a regional style, but I think it tells a very cool story. This is the Hangi pizza from Hell Pizza in New Zealand or Altoa. And here's how I made it. To make the hungi pork belly, I sliced some pork belly into strips and cooked that inside a cabbage wrap of sweet potatoes, chicken stock, and a ton of salt. I then wrapped the cabbage in tin foil and cooked it low and slow all day to mimic a traditional hongi. To make the stuffing, I combined the dried bread, onion, rosemary, thyme, butter, egg, and salt in a bowl by hand. Traditionally, the stuffing is cooked with the hongi parcel, but I wanted to control the texture a little bit for our pizza

topping. I roasted the sweet potatoes until nice and golden and soft, and then pureeed that with butter, cream, paprika, and salt till it was smooth and delicious. Then I sauteed some spinach for topping later and some onions too. To assemble it, I rolled out the dough and added our sweet potato puree, our spinach, our mats, the pork belly, our stuffing, and our onions. Then I ran it through that gazni arcel till it was golden brown and delicious. First, I want to smell it. Oh, dude, the pork belly that's been cooking the cabbage all day is incredible. So, a hungi is a traditional earth oven that was developed by the Maui people, the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand or in the Maui language out Teroa uh

thousands of years ago. And you effectively create a large pit, fill it with coals or hot stones and then just throw meat, vegetables, roots on top, cover it in earth, and everything steams together and smokes together and it's wonderful. and Hell Pizza, which was started in 1996, uh, in New Zealand, uh, they decided to team up with one of the best Hungy masters in New Zealand, uh, and make this pizza. Now, we recreated it, and I want to try it, man. Oh, I mean, it's like so smoky from that Gazny. You get that char on it, but then you have like all this sumptuous sweet potato.

I've never had that combination of flavors before on a pizza, which I think is a phrase that is said a lot throughout the world. I've never had that combination of flavors before and now I'm having it on a pizza which is why I wanted to tell the story of this pizza because you're taking literally like an indigenous Mauy dish from the island and you are probably introducing a hell of a lot of people to it via a vessel that feels very safe and uh very accessible like a pizza. Callum Davies founded Hell Pizza in 1996. There's 70 locations right now in New Zealand. And initially it was, you know, kind of this edgy pizza joint that, you know, named all its pizzas after the seven deadly sins. But it was in 2024 that they partnered with RuPen, one of

the best Hongi masters, uh, to create this pizza. And I just think it's so cool. They're also known for their stunt marketing. In 2006, they printed 170,000 branded condoms and gave them out and sparked like a little bit of a political backlash. Uh, so I do respect their game on that as well. To me, this is the perfect full circle story of pizza though, right? Like you have something like a Lakma Jun that has these very ancient origins that can then kind of be marketed as a pizza because it looks like it a little bit and then you have, you know, this truly like primordial primmer of a pizza and the things that shift off of it and then the ability to loop it all the way around to

use a modern pizza to tell the story of an ancient dish in a way that everybody could understand. And I mean this is like the evolution of food. This is the evolution of the entire world. And this is what makes me endlessly fascinated with it, right? And again like thank you to authors like William Alexander who wrote the 10 tomatoes that changed the world because those types of stories are what keeps me uh engaged. It's never just about the actual taste of the food. And this does taste great, but like knowing the history about it is just so cool. And then being able to have the proper equipment to actually execute that. What a treat to exist in the world.

There's another continent. It's Antarctica. It's the biggest continent. That's not true, but it's one of them. And it has ice. Do we have the Antarctic pizza? Yeah. So, here what I did, what I did to this pizza is I took a frozen pizza. You can't tell the story of pizza in the world without telling the story of frozen pizza. And Antarctica, I don't know if you know this, covered nice. And so, uh, we have the frozen pizza and I froze the pizza. And we're just gonna grate a little bit of fresh. This is reo. This is dry ice reo.

12 months aged, uh, dry ice reo. We're just going to go ahead and grate some of that over the top. That is beautiful. And now, they say that you never cut this with a pizza cutter. You always cut it with scissors cuz otherwise it would destroy the cust. We have the scissors. And we just It's just going to take like 30 seconds. Just give me a sec. Hey, while I do this, you guys want to come eat some pizza? Yeah. Guys, come eat some pizza. I'm just going to I'll cut you a slice of this fresh, but otherwise in Antarctica. It's I'm actually getting somewhere with it, though.

You should do that one. The Brazilian one's cool. While you wait for this one, someone really Someone had someone like did this though. Yeah, I did. You did that? Yeah, I did that. What did you freeze it in? Um, a pot. Thank you so much for watching me struggle to cut a frozen pizza with scissors. Uh but truly, thank you for sticking around. This is like one of my favorite things that I do. It's one of my favorite foods to eat. And thank you so much to Gausny for truly for making this episode possible. Kobe, can you stop the grading the dry ice? Thank you so much. It was pretty cool. And thank you so much to

Gazny for making this happen. Truly like we wouldn't have done this episode uh without Gausny in the picture. So, thank you so much. This has been really cool. Go get yourself a Gaznney. Follow mythical for more last meals moments and be the first to know who our next guest is going to be.