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According to legend, the tapa tradition began when Castile's King, Alfonso X of Castile or Alfonso the Wise, recovered from an illness by drinking wine mixed with small dishes between meals. After regaining his health, the king ordered that taverns were not allowed to serve wine to customers unless the beverage was accompanied by a small snack or tapas. The word became a kind of loophole in the law to allow drinkers to imbibe alcohol. |
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Pissaladiere or Pissaladina (pissaladiera in Provençal) is a type of pizza made in southern France, around the Nice, Marseilles, Toulon and the Var District. Believed to have been introduced to the area by Roman cooks during the time of the Avignon Papacy, it can be considered a type of white pizza, as no tomatoes are used.
The dough is usually thicker than that of the classic Italian pizza, and the topping consist of: sauteed (almost pureed) onions and anchovies. No cheese is used, again unlike the Neapolitan pizza, however in the nearby Italian town of San Remo mozzarella is added. Now served as an appetizer, it was traditionally cooked and sold early each morning.
Another view held by food specialists is that pissaladiere is not a pizza, but a flat open-face tart garnished with onions, olives, anchovies and sometimes tomato. The etymology of the word seems to be from Old French pescion from the Latin piscis.
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