The Food Story - Can You Stomach These?

Rotten Shark Delicacy

Eythor Halldorsson's restaurant prepares months-old rotten shark for you.

The decomposed shark flesh is a delicacy in Iceland, where the traditional menu is as wild as the country of volcanoes and icy waters.
AFP report that the dish, called hakarl, is sealed in a jar - "to stop the aroma from escaping". The aroma is between ammonia and blue cheese.
So is the taste, accompanied by fishy texture and a burning fizz on the tongue.

Iceland, the island of just 317,000 people under the Arctic Circle abounds with fresh, organic food, nearly all of it having to be caught, fished or shot.

The shark is first buried under gravel for two months to drain acids produced by the animal's urine, then hung up for another long spell.

Old ways are being rekindled.

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Pizza In Naples May Be Baked Using Coffin Wood
(File picture of a policeman searching a coffin in Naples caskets to keep ovens burning.) 

ROME : Italian prosecutors believe pizza in the southern city of Naples may be baked in ovens lit with wood from coffins dug up from the local cemetery, Italian daily Il Giornale reported.

"Pizza, one of the few symbols of Naples that resists... is hit by the concrete suspicion that it could be baked with wood from coffins," Il Giornale said.

Investigators in Naples are setting their sights on the thousands of small, lower-end pizza shops and bakeries that dot the city on suspicion that patrons may "use wood from Naples' graveyard has long been hunting ground for thieves.
Last year, 5,000 flower pots were stolen from the cemetery.

"A gang might have set up a market for coffins sold to hard-hearted owners of bakeries and pizzerias looking to save money on wood," Il Giornale said.

Neapolitan pizza was invented between 1715 and 1725, with the world-famous Margherita variant first cooked up in 1889.

Tradition has it that queen Margherita of Savoy asked one of Naples' famed pizzaioli to come up with a dish for the people.
The result, which provides the basis for most pizzas enjoyed around the world, represented the colours of recently unified Italy: green basil, white mozzarella and red tomatoes.

AFP report, Italy's estimated 25,000 pizzerias employ around 150,000 people and account for a turnover of 5.3 billion euros (6.5 billion dollars).