That sounds too complicated. I like Pepperoni more.

Ragout = stew (any)
Ragu = meaty sauce named after French ragouts Italians encountered during the Napoleonic era (generally put on pasta)

Just because pizza originates from Italy doesn't make it exclusively an Italian food, and pizzas made outside Italy aren't inauthentic. That boat sailed a long time ago. They're just foods that share a common origin, the paths of which have diverged and have different styles, ingredients, and preparation methods in different places.

Pizza pre-dates European consumption of the tomato (which came from S. America), and the "original" pizzas of Naples didn't even include mozzarella, so who the hell it to say what's "real" or "authentic" anyways?

Feel free to post another wall of text though.

You know its funny now that I think about it, but I've never have actually eaten crawdad. I catch them all the time but usually just a couple to throw in the horse trough.

look. all i want to know....is if prawns and shrimp are the same species. if tin-yam chan didn't settle the dispute earlier perhaps some other crustacean expert will step forward.

Think of it like this: Labrador Retrievers and German Shepherds are both dogs, but they're not the same type of dog. They're different "races". Same with prawns and shrimp. Prawns are a little bigger than shrimp, their physical attributes are different, but they're still very similar. That said, they're not the same animal. A prawn is not a shrimp no more than a Lab is a German Shepherd and a tiger is a lion.

Yet they are all delicious when consumed from the barbecue.

Balderdash. Pizza isn't an Italian food? Are you serious? When food originates from a place, it does become that place's food. I don't care how popular it is elsewhere, it's still the original country's food. Maybe that offends your sensibilities and crushes your opinion of yourself, but that doesn't change the fact that it's true. I guess sushi isn't Japanese, then, since tons of Americans eat it?

It doesn't mean it's inauthentic if it's made anywhere else, as I've already said numerous times. In fact, one year the Japanese won the international pizza competition with the best pizza in the world. The Turks were the first to cook flat bread on a rock and put food on it, which the Italians took and made pizza out of. I'm not discussing the anthropology of pizza, but pizza as it is today is an Italian dish. The only exception is if we're talking about utter garbage pizza like Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's, Little Caeser's, etc. That's sh*t, not pizza...utter sh*t.

Go ahead and call your average American-made ham San Daniele or Parma prosciutto and see what happens. Lawsuits.

When I go to the states, I don't ask for a salamino pizza....I ask for pepperoni. I get that it's not going to change. I'm just saying people should be aware of the difference, at the very least when they come here.

You're right, American creations like deep dish pizza and stuffed pizza are original and distinct from anything served in Italy...because they're awful.

First of all, it wouldn't be sold in Italy because no one would eat it. It's like eating a pound of grease in a bread bowl filled with enough tomato "sauce" to make soup, topped with some shredded plastic concoction that somehow passes FDA approval and is considered mozzarella cheese, on a layer of D-grade meat and vegetables. Then they inject the "pasta" crust with more fake plastic cheese that tastes like greasy cardboard. This is not American pizza. This is awful, artery-clogging, gag-inducing "food" that's not worthy of consumption.

Don't insult Chicago pizza by throwing it in with the rest of what people call deep dish pizza...it's not. Chicago pizza is more like a cross between focaccia and pizza...or pizza grossa, which, by the way, existed in Italy well before anyone in Chicago thought of it. Who do you think brought it to Chicago? It didn't just magically appear one day.

Have you ever even been to Italy? Do you even know how many different types of pizza there are here? This is a place that's about 10 miles from my house that specializes in what you'd call "deep dish" pizza, only it doesn't suck: Vecchio

This is a place that's about 10 miles from my house that specializes in what you'd call "deep dish" pizza, only it doesn't suck: Vecchio

LOL at the second comment! This place reminded me of Pizza Hut in the US! Must be a great place if they're comparable with the second worst pizza joint ever.

All this talk of pizza made got me in the mood for it tonight so I made 2 tonight. For the first I used deer burger, mushrooms, and onions with some spices. And the second was ham (not Canadian Bacon), olives, and pineapple over some New Mexico salsa I had laying around.

And come to think of it, I guess that Jucy Lucy I got in Minneapolis last week is German food. Who brought burgers to Minneapolis? German sailors from Hamburg, that's who!

And Coney Island hot dogs are Viennese/Austrian cuisine! Who brought wieners to New York? Austrian sailors from Wien, that's who!

Sorry dude, you're insufferable.

Trust me, that place is nothing like Pizza Hut. One idiot comment out of like 500 and that just negates all the others, right? And whaddya know, he was American. He's either an idiot or just trolling. That just reinforces my point, MD.