Pizza Eisack Valley-style
Story No.6
The rumbling in Aki’s tummy has been getting louder for quite a while now. Swimming and sliding was great fun, but now it’s high time he put something in his beak.
Quickly the little eagle dries himself and sets off. At first he doesn’t know exactly where to go, but soon a delicious smell begins to tickle his nostrils.
Mmmm! How good that smells! Aki’s tummy seems to react to the tempting aroma too, since it grumbles more loudly than ever.
The longer Aki follows the scent, the more varied it seems to get. Can he smell tomatoes? Or perhaps bread?
Aki hurries along and in the blink of an eye he finds himself in the children’s kitchen. A chef is just preparing some small balls of dough there.
“Hello! What are you making?” Aki asks curiously.
“Hello! I’m preparing the dough for the pizzas,” explains the chef.
Aki is puzzled. “What is a pizza?” he asks.
The chef laughs in surprise, since absolutely everyone knows what a pizza is. But he decides to show Aki and invites him to make one with him. The little eagle doesn’t need asking twice. Cooking is fun!
First of all Aki is given a chef’s hat and he has to wash his wings, since cooks need to be clean.
“To begin with, we have to roll the dough out nice and thinly.” The chef shows Aki what to do and explains to him that he made the dough yesterday, as it needed to rest and rise overnight.
“What happens next?” asks Aki in excitement and looks around the kitchen.
The chef brings a large pan full of a red sauce. “This is the tomato sauce. It’s the first thing that we put on top of your pizza.
So that would be the tomatoes that Aki could smell before. The sauce smells really strongly of tomatoes - and something else...
The chef passes Aki a ladle and shows him how to put the sauce onto the dough base. “That’s enough. Now you can spread the sauce out in a circle with the ladle. Doesn’t it smell delicious? That’s because we only use sun-ripened tomatoes. Nearby we have a farmer who grows our vegetables for us, which means that the tomatoes come directly from the vine onto our pizzas. The other thing that you might be able to smell is oregano, a herb, which goes really well with tomato sauce.”
So that was the smell that Aki didn’t recognise before!
The chef brings a white ball and a knife.
“Here, now you can slice the Mozzarella. It’s a really soft, delicious cheese and this one here is made from milk from South Tyrolean cows.”
Aki looks at the chef. A thought crosses his mind. “Is it actually important? I mean, that the ingredients are from round here and not somewhere else?”
The chef smiles. “Yes, it is very important. Ingredients that come from somewhere else have to travel a long distance to get here and that is really not good for the environment. It is much better to use foods that can be bought locally and preferably that are currently in season. That means they are fresh and haven’t been stored for a long time.
Aki is amazed. He likes the fact that the people here care so much about the environment. After all, he knows that lots of animals and plants live in nature.
With the chef’s help he snips the Mozzarella up into small pieces and spreads it over the sauce.
“Look! You’ve made a Margherita pizza! If you like, you can add ham or vegetables to it now,” explains the chef and shows him small bowls with all kinds of delicious titbits in them.
Boldly, Aki reaches out and chooses ham, sweetcorn and pepper. At this sight, the little eagle’s tummy rumbles again.
With a big shovel, the chef picks up the pizza and slides it into the oven. “Don’t worry, it will be ready very soon, since pizzas only need around five minutes to cook.”
Aki is happy. He sits down at a table and waits. As promised, the smell of freshly baked pizza soon reaches his nostrils. He bites into a slice with relish. What a taste! Aki has never eaten anything so delicious before. And while he polishes off one piece after another, he thinks about the garden where the tomatoes grew, and about the cows who gave the milk for the Mozzarella.
The little eagle leaves the kitchen with a full tummy. It’s amazing what you can learn as you cook!
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