Guest Blog 2: The Decumani

Thank goodness for Harry, since I had no material this week.  His latest production is a… Decumani:

My wife and I were visiting Naples this fall. We had just finished a tour of the city’s Duomo, and were poking around the Via dei Tribunali, near the Via San Gregorio Armeno, in the Decumano Maggiore section of the city. The San Gregorio Armeno is famous for the craftsmen that still carve shepherds and other figures for the traditional Neapolitan nativity scenes, a tradition that dates back some 400 years. It was lunch time and by happenstance we found ourselves in the  Antica Pizzeria "i Decumani". While there were introduced by our table neighbors to the restaurant’s signature dish “i Decumani.” Looking more like a pizza “ring” rather than a pizza “pie” we were intrigued and ordered one.

It was delicious, and unlike any pizza we had ever tasted. The ring was “stuffed” with eggplant, olives, and mozzarella cheese. And then it was covered with slices of prosciutto, and arugula leaves.

Being somewhat of a pizza chef myself (we have a wood burning pizza oven at our house) i Decumani 2I started to deconstruct the dish with the objective of recreating the treat once we arrived back in the States. It appeared that once the pizza dough was formed into a “pie”, the center portion was cut to make flaps that were then folded back over the fillings and the outer crust, thereby forming a ring.

i Decumani 1

I tried this technique after we arrived back home with pretty good results, as you can see from the pictures.

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