Wise Quacks? Peking duck on a pizza

[Photo by Wang Xiaoying/China Daily]

I've tried the duck pizza at Tiago and felt my own skepticism washing away. As Gung Ho's Gray notes, the hoisin sauce nicely binds the flavors together, and Tiago's version is generous enough with duck slices that the cheese complements but never overpowers it.

The latest entry on the scene is at Pizza Express, the 500-plus worldwide chain that opened its first mainland restaurant last year. Its Peking duck pizza is a special creation for the Beijing market－served on a Roman-style crust that's flat and thin, almost cracker-like, with good-sized slices of flavorful duck that don't have to compete with too much sauce or cheese on the palate. Like at Tiago, this pizza is topped with spring onions but it's given a little extra edge with some red chili as well.

It's pretty grand with a glass of the house red－though my server, who says the duck pizza is equally popular with Chinese and foreigners, had suggested prosecco.

So do Peking duck and pizza marry in a particularly clever example of fusion, or are some classics best left untampered with? Rachel Ray, the US host of a hit TV cooking show, is all for it－she goes even further and Americanizes her "all-star" recipe by substituting chicken for duck. At Cdkitchen.com, the Peking duck pizza recipe calls for 2 cups of mushrooms (!) and a sprinkling of fried wonton crisps (!!) on top.

That could make a few classically trained chefs shudder. But Wolfgang Puck started a pizza revolution in Los Angeles with his now-classic salmon pizza in 1982, and California Pizza Kitchen made barbecue chicken pizza a menu staple 30 years ago.

And if some French chefs are willing to put foie gras on a pizza (mais oui!), maybe cuisine has gone so global that we should just get over it.