To me, rucola is a very touchy pizza topping, in fact, rucola is the touchiest food I know. Why? It all started with its name. To English people, rucola is known as rocket or arugula, in German, it’s called Rauke. But in Germany, Rauke was never really popular a lettuce plant, it only came into fashion in the 1990s, at a time when German cuisine was regarded as dull, out of date and simply pathetic, no stylish restaurant would dare to have anything remotely traditionally German on their menus, and so every single leaf of Rauke, whether sprinkled on pasta or part of a salad, was henceforth called rucola, or as nouns are capitalised in German, Rucola. Now, some people are stupid enough to not have realised this, even though Rucola was being put mostly on everything Italian, no pizza or pasta without some Rucola on it, as we Germans love to demonstrate how very worldly we are, but still, some people don’t get anything, some people being my ex-boyfriend’s best friend—let’s call him Justin. Justin, I hated. He’s the stupidest person on this planet. And when he was the third wheel on a trip to Italy, his stupidity would drive me crazy from dusk till dawn, from Milan to Rome and back, and to me, it all culminated in one singularly stupid question, asked in a restaurant in Florence: “What is rucola called in Italian?”—Aaaaaaarrrgh!—Since this day, I can’t look at rucola without thinking of him, and since I ordered pizza with extra rucola today, I think I have developed some masochistic tendencies…