Legislators in Italy, who are so concerned with the authenti-city of pizza that they have approved legislation about it, had better stay away from Hong Kong, where aberrations such as pizza topped with Thousand Island dressing instead of tomato sauce can be found. According to an article in The New York Times, the Association of Real Neapolitan Pizza helped to devise a law to specify what can be called a Neapolitan pizza: it must be made from hand-shaped dough (no rolling pins allowed) and contain a certain flour, salt and yeast; it must have a diameter of precisely 35cm, be topped with tomatoes from the Mount Vesuvius region and be cooked in a wood-fired oven. Pizzerias that stray from these parameters cannot call their pizzas Neapolitan. Not surprisingly the law is causing arguments in the dish's homeland, yet it seems no sanctions will be taken against those who dare to use different types of tomatoes and still call their creation Neapolitan. According to the article, Rosa Russo Iervolino, the mayor of Naples, supports the new law and sees it as a guarantee of quality. It is difficult to see how a 35cm- diameter pizza might be superior to a similar pizza 36cm across, but it would be an excellent idea to pass laws against the use of Thousand Island dressing and sweet corn on pizza.
