Condiments to Garnish Your Pizza
If you have been starting to think Romania is possibly a little different than America, I might whisper in your ear that you could be right. As we continue our carefully controlled scientific experiments in pursuit of truth, let us examine the disparities between our commonality. Following me?
Mmmm… American pizza. It would be heresy to suggest a better pizza could be found any place in the world. The United States got lucky by welcoming immigrants who brought a wealth of cuisines and dabbled in the alchemy of cross-culture mashups. While a plurality of the results may have been bland disasters, a significant portion were products of genius. American pizza is most definitely one of the latter.
Aşa… Romanian pizza. Can you believe it? Yes, they eat pizza in Romania, too. It’s quite different because it very closely resembles the traditional Italian-style pizza. While a full examination of the differences warrants an entirely separate post to catalogue in detail, suffice to say that Romanian pizza is smaller in circumference, has a bland and thin crust, is topped with very little cheese, and sometimes does not include tomato sauce. It may sound terrible, at first blush, yet I can assure you that it’s “quite okay.”
The point of this particular exercise is to briefly note the use of condiments on pizza.
The typical American pizza order does not normally include any kind of extraneous sauce or dips. In fact, for eons, they weren’t even offered. Only recently have American pizza companies been searching for additional profit sources and thus begun offering things like ranch sauce, garlic butter, or marinara. Most people, most of the time, just eat the pizza. Afterall, it’s fantastic!
However, our Romanian friends handle this delicate affair in a radically different manner.
The rumors are true. A digustingly common practice across Europe is to smother one’s pizza in ketchup. And I don’t mean they dip lightly, either. No, sir. I’m not sure if it is the sublimely plain crust or the lack of marinara or derth of cheese-like substances, but the reaction is incredibly violent.
Europeans scramble over one another to seize the nearest bottle of ketchup, literally fighting (oh, yes, even the French… in fact, especially the French) with one another at the table if only one bottle is available per 3 or more people, while instantaneously flinging open the cap so they can flip it upside down (free flying particles be damned!) and squeeze with both hands using the same force and pressure an otherwise normal person might apply to shatter gold bars into dust.
Einstein would be deeply impressed by studying the firehose-like physics involved emptying a the contents of ketchup bottle through a pencil sized hole in under 3 seconds flat without shattering the plastic. On the other hand, if he witnessed this utterly disturbing travesty, he might need Freud to help him get rid of the nightmares.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with geography, Romania is a country in Europe. By extension, one might logically think it was possible that Romanians, therefore, enjoy ketchup on their pizza. Ding, ding, ding! Give that man a prize!
Fortunately, I can assure you that Romanians are still much closer to their Italian cousins in this respect. While some parts of Europe abuse ketchup to the point of need a bowl for their pizza soup, Romanians are much more judicious. They simply slather copious amounts across the top of each slice much as one might apply Skippy to Wonder. You know… otherwise, the cheese might actually come into contact with air. Or your taste buds.
There are two common accomplices for this, Spring and Tomi. Both brands are popular enough to be found most anywhere in Romania, generally sold in 12 oz. plastic squeeze bottles. Staring at the grocery selection, you’ll find ketchup comes in more than one variety. No, green ketchup is not one of them. The primary choices are ketchup dulce and ketchup picant.
Ketchup dulce is considered the “normal” ketchup. Dulce is the word for “sweet” and allow me to assure you that it is, in fact, very sweet. I believe the scientists who formulated ketchup dulce were commissioned to determine the exact point of saturation where just one single more granule of sugar results in a crunchy texture. They left out that one kernel and thus retained fluidity. If you have not had a recent dental check-up, be advised that ketchup dulce will probably refortify your cavities.
And that is what the Romanians tend to drape generously across their pizza.
On the other hand, ketchup picant is considered the “other” ketchup because of the perception that it is hot. Picant is the word for “spicy” (or “picante” in Tex-Mex terms). Please understand that this is a wild misconception. Ketchup picant is not hot. Not even a little. Of course, the picture on the bottle looks scary. With it’s display of a hot pepper piercing the heart of a tomato, children are loathe to try tasting it and adults think twice before buying it.
But, tis a crock. Verily.
Sure, when you take a look at the incredients, you see “picant 1%” clearly indicated. That’s one percent, kids. And, you know what? It’s not a habenero. It’s not a Thai chile. It’s not a jalepeno. In reality, they use a close cousin of the bell pepper. At one percent, you cannot even taste it.
What, then, is the difference? Sugar.
Roughly speaking, ketchup picant has around half the sugar of ketchup dulce. That makes ketchup picant close to the American-style ketchup, which is entirely too sweet in its own right.
American ketchup has so much corn syrup in it that producers actually list this ingredient as being two separate types of corn syrup just so it doesn’t appear to be the dominant ingredient. Yet, the typical tablespoon of ketchup has a tablespoon of sugar in it (technically, the high fructose corn syrup plus regular corn syrup). That leaves precious little room for tomatoes.
So, why is Romanian ketchup sweeter than American ketchup? Primarily because Romanian ketchup includes far less salt, garlic, and vinegar than the American brands. Without all this tartness, the sugar is much easier to taste. It’s basically just tomato paste and sugar, with a pinch of other stuff. And yet, the total caloric value of the sugar is less. Plus they use actual sugar, not the corn syrup madness.
If you’re eating pizza at a restaurant in Romania, you’ll probably be stuck with ketchup dulce as that is most popular. Oh, and should you encounter “ketchup pizza” or “sos pizza” in your travels, then you might want to be forewarned that it is a ketchup-like substance with a few herbs, but severely watered down.
However, if you are staying long enough (say, a week or more) to rent an apartment and shop for food, then I suggest you pick up the ketchup picant instead. It’s closer to what you are used to tasting.
Fun fact: Tomi is owned by Orkla Foods, a Norwegian company which snaps up little food companies across Europe. The local corporate arm, Orkla Foods Romania, is run by CEO Aliz Kosza. In addition to Tomi, they own several additional Romanian brands — Weissana, Bunatati de la Bunica, Frühstück, La Minut, Ardealul, and, most recently, Royal Brinkers.
And then, there is the alternative to putting ketchup on your pizza: sos usturoi.
Sos is the Romanian word for “sauce” and you pronounce the two almost identically. Usturoi (OO-store-roy) is the word for “garlic.” Boy howdy, sos usturoi is no joke. It is a seriously powerful gastronomic wonder. Essentially, it consists of mayonnaise plus garlic juice plus garlic extract plus garlic clumps plus garlic bits. It may even have garlic power, as well.
Clearly, sos usturoi is not painted on one’s pizza. That would probably cause your mouth to light on fire. Or give you pungent breath for days on end. Instead, you gingerly (pun intended) dip the edge of your pizza into the sauce and merrily eat away.
Again, if you are in Romania long enough to do some shopping, you will find sos usturoi for sale in most markets. Although, I’ve only seen it offered from the Spring brand. And, strangely, their label says “Pastă Usturoi” instead of sos usteroi.
Of course, if you correctly believe that mayo is a foul business which ought not have ever been invented, then you are likely to join me in the camp of folks who rarely-if-ever eat sos usturoi. Just in case, you should always check how the sos usturoi is prepared, because there are a few places which use little-to-no mayo in their recipe. While I’ve yet to figure out what else is in there, I do know it is wonderful. And sharp.
Before parting, I should mention that if you end up finding yourself hungry while waiting around the Bucureşti train station, then don’t be a loser: walk right past that silly McDonald’s where fearful Americans hide for comfort. Instead, go next door where you can replenish yourself at SpringTime, a nice little traveler-style restaurant wholly-owned by Spring which serves healthy food and fast food. It has both indoor seating for those wanting to relax a while as well as an outside walk-up window for those in a hurry. There, you should be able to sample the usturoi or ketchup sos while enjoying a decent meal with rapid service.
August 10th, 2006 at 2:47 am
[...] I love ketchup. Always have. My disappointment with the overly sugared tomato paste that passes for ketchup in Romania has driven me to actually start making my own tastier ketchup at home, which lets me appreciate just how inexpensive it is to create ketchup (let alone if you buy in obscene bulk amounts like the big boys). But don’t look at me too funny for cooking my own ketchup, because I could have told you how to make your own Big Mac. Spread the Love:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
August 12th, 2006 at 7:40 am
This is funny, they do that psycho ketchup on pizza thing in Lebanon too, I never realized anyone else did it though. Corn is also one of the standard pizza toppings. I rebelled at first, always making a point to order mine without corn and ketchup. Somewhere in the lst 3 years though I got into it, and now I think pizza tastes funny without ketchup.
October 14th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
[...] Pizza. Your disbelief will start with the menu itself, as you find yourself faced with very specific types of pizza you are allowed to order. Most of these will seem like bizarre choices, unless you’re partial to combinations like tuna, corn, and eggs. Deviation from those pizzas which are defined in the menu will only result in confused waiters or pissed off window clerks, neither of whom understand the concept of ordering a pizza with custom toppings. Your perplexity will come next in the idea that each person gets his own pizza, which makes more sense once the food is being served and you find your pie is the size of a tea saucer. You’ll come close to losing your mind when you realize how regretfully thin and limp the excuse for dough is. You might lose some hair when you find there is no marinara or pizza sauce on your pizza, but instead you’ve been cheated with a thimble full of dyed-red corn syrup. The lack of cheese will flabbergast you. But what shocks you the most is you can see there’s no sauce and no cheese precisely because your miniature pizza is dearth of the very toppings you were pigeonholed into ordering. In the center will be your egg, surrounded by several nibblets of corn and garinished with a chunk or two of tuna. Just as your bloodpressure is causing your veins to pulsate noticeably, you realize all the locals are digging right into their meals as if nothing were completely wrong with this picture. In fact, you’ll enter momentary brain freeze as you witness the 13 gallons of ketchup (with extra water and extra sugar) they drown each slice in until the flavor of their wafer resembles that of cotton candy. What will keep you out of a catatonic state is faint comprehension that this daring sociological expedition of yours to the very reaches of sanity only set you back a mere two or three bucks. [...]