環(huán)球英語—1056:Pizza: A Cultural Food

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Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Liz Waid.
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And I’m Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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Today’s Spotlight is all about a food people eat all around the world. It is pizza! Very simply, pizza is a food made by putting meat and vegetables, called toppings, on top of bread. All around the world people enjoy different food toppings on their pizzas.
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In Brazil, green peas are popular on pizza.
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In Japan, food from the sea, like eel and squid are popular.
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In Costa Rica, people enjoy the coconut fruit on top of their pizzas.
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In Italy, the bread, or crust, of the pizza is the most important part. It is more important than anything that goes on it!
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But in the Netherlands TOPPINGS are very important! A popular pizza in the Netherlands is called the “double dutch.” It has two times the cheese, two times the onions, and two times the beef! It has two times the toppings!
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As you can see, there are many different ways to eat pizza. And each way is correct. The simple design of pizza is the same all over the world. But everyone likes something different on top of it! It is common for different cultures to have their own kinds of food. A food that is popular in one culture will not always be popular in another culture. But pizza seems to cross all these barriers. Pizza is popular in almost every part of the world! So, why IS pizza so popular? Where did it even come from?
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Well, no one really knows WHERE the idea for modern pizza started. But experts do agree that the design, or recipe, for modern pizza was probably put together using different ideas from different cultures. A few cultures already had a simple common recipe for pizza almost two thousand years ago!
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Even before that, Middle Eastern cultures had something similar to pizza. Babylonians, Israelites, and Egyptians liked to eat flat, cooked bread. They would add olive oil and good tasting spices to the bread. Then they cooked this flat, spiced bread in hot ovens made of earth or on top of hot flat stones. It was a small food that people ate between meals. Or they added it to a meal.
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Another version of this flat round bread was also popular in Greece. The Greeks called it “plankuntos.” They put vegetables and meat on top of the flat bread.
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But many experts believe that the version of pizza that people know best today started in the city of Naples, in Italy. The people of Naples called this food “foccaccia.” The people in Naples considered foccaccia a food for poor people.
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In those times, people could not store food for a long time. If they did not eat the food quickly, it would go bad. So, people began to think of different ways to use and eat the food that would go bad. Bread was easy to make. So, people put their extra food on top of a thin piece of bread. They could put vegetables, meat, or any other food they had on this bread, or crust. Then, they would put the spices on it to improve its taste, and cook it. This was the perfect food! People could hold it in their hands and eat it. It tasted very good. And it did not cost a lot of money to make!
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But it took almost 800 years for pizza to become a popular food. In 1830, the first pizzeria opened in Naples, Italy. This restaurant ONLY sold pizza! But the pizza of that time still looked a little different from the modern pizza we know today. In eighteen eighty nine, Don Raffaele Esposito created the first modern pizza. And he was one of the first people to put tomatoes on pizza. People still do that today! The story goes like this.
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Queen Margherita Theresa was visiting Naples. She had heard of pizza, but she had never tried it. During her visit to Naples, she finally decided to try it! Don Raffaele was a famous pizza maker. She asked him to make a special pizza for her.
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So, Don Raffaele designed a pizza especially for the Queen. He added three particular toppings to the pizza. First, he put mozzarella cheese on top of the pizza. Mozzarella cheese was made from the milk of a water buffalo - a kind of local cow. It is a white cheese. Then, he put red tomatoes on top of the mozzarella. Then Don Raffaele added basil leaves. Basil is a green plant with a good taste. These three toppings were white, red and green - the colors of the Italian flag! He called this pizza the Margherita Pizza. The Queen was very happy! And the Margherita Pizza is still a very popular kind of pizza today!
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After this event, people no longer considered pizza a poor person’s food. Everyone, rich or poor, enjoyed this easy to eat, delicious food. As people began to travel more often, they began sharing the news about pizza.
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Today, people all over the world buy more than five thousand million [5,000,000,000] pizzas every year. The recipe for pizza has changed a bit over the years. Today people usually make pizza by putting sauce, a kind of thick liquid, over the crust. The most popular kind of sauce is made from tomatoes. Then cheese and toppings of all kinds go on top of the sauce. But pizza makers have tried to put almost any kind of food you can imagine on top of a pizza!
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People all over the world have helped to create the recipe for pizza. It is a food that combines different foods from different countries. And it is probably one of the oldest foods you can think of! But one of the best things about pizza is this: you can create your own special kind of pizza. You can put anything you like on it. You can mix different foods from different cultures and create something wonderful.
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Often beautiful and good things can come from places we do not expect. Who would have expected that such an ancient and simple food would be popular today? Pizza is just one example of how great things can happen when cultures come together.
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This program was written and produced by Liz Waid. The voices you heard were from the United States. Computer users can hear our programs, read our scripts, and see our word list on our website at https://www.Radio.English.net This. program is called “Pizza: A Cultural Food.”
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If you have a comment or question you can email us. Our email address is Radio @ English . net. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye!