Piz – A Pizza by Any Other Name…

Piz (pronounced PEETS) is short for a specific pizza that my mother, aunts, and grandmas made around Easter.

Piz is one of two different piz (come on…) that we’d have around that time:

• One piz was savory with eggs, moozadell, parmagian, rigott, pepperoni, preciute with pastry crust on bottom, top, and sides. I’m totally unsure why my mother called it piz other than it’s likely a derivative of one of terms that can be found on the web for recipes calling it:
  • Neapolitan Easter Pizza
  • Pizza Piena or Pizza Chiena
  • Gain or Gaine
  • Pizza Rustica
  • just plain old Meat Pie

• The other piz was sweet. My mother also call it “Pastid” (AKA Pastia click here to see recipe – but in my mother’s case it was made with rice not noodles).

Why is it that Nebulatans (Neapolitan-Americans) ran out of words to describe anything that tended to have a crust…basically calling everything pizza or some derivative!

Also, PIZ is not to be confused with ABIZ (a-BEEZ), APIZ (a-PEETS), or APIZZA (a-pizza) which are terms that are used for a style of pizza that is primarily found in New Haven, CT, USA (see Wikipedia click here).

I’ve made the savory piz several times in the past few years using this recipe (click here).

As a special Easter treat for our neighbors, who have been more than gracious with Cathy’s injury and subsequent surgery, I made piz as our “share a plate”.

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IT WAS AWESOME!