My Madeleines are frozen pizzas. From Wisconsin.
Also: is vegan meat kosher? The answer is more complicated than you think. Also also: The Good Place is almost back — and hopefully so are Megan Amram's food puns
Chicago, one of the world’s great pizza cities, does not possess the ubiquity of slice shops that a certain eastern metropolis boasts, nor the heightened slice standards such numbers engender. But Chicago makes a lot of astounding, stupendous, phenomenal pizza (most of it not deep dish — though one or two local joints of that ilk stand out for sure) and there’s almost no reason for a resident to subject themselves to anything less than a superlative pie.
Which makes my somewhat regular craving for Tombstone Pizza all the more embarrassing.
I don’t think Proust or the original Neapolitan pizzaiolos would begrudge anyone the madeleine of their choice, though, if they could peer through time, they’d wonder how any childhood spent happily devouring mediocre frozen grocery store pizza in a ranch house in suburban Milwaukee could be viewed as anything but a tragedy. But friends — I loved Wisconsin, I loved riding bikes with my neighbors and friends through ditches and off of makeshift ramps that may or may not be responsible for some very slight brain damage, I mean FLUGLEHORN it’s totally fine — and after digging up garden beds in search of pirate treasure, makeshift lightsaber duels or losing at Monopoly, I loved shoving mouth-roof-searing hot slices of Supreme-style Tombstone — laden with the vegetables that clearly made pizza a well-balanced meal, right, Mom? — into my gaping maw.
My childhood wasn’t perfect, but holy crap, Tombstone pizza still is, for what it is, which is what Anthony Bourdain used to call “utility pizza” — chow that sustains and does not disappoint. And every few weeks or so, a bite of a perfectly serviceable Pepperoni slice will recall nearly forgotten Wisconsin summers, filled with mosquitos big enough to have FAA Aircraft Numbers and the occasional tornado (one of which my family spent EATING BREAKFAST THROUGH instead of huddling in a basement, as it tore up houses one subdivision over, because lives in Seoul and Queens, NY had ill-prepared us for DEADLY MIDWESTERN WEATHER.)
I’m spending Sunday making wood-fired pizza with good friends, using 36-hour fermented dough, topped with speck and soppressata. New memories, new pizzas. Both will be just as sweet as those days spent eating hot salty cheesy cardboard, in a town as far away from Naples and Seoul as it’s possible to be, wondering what kind of person I’d turn into.
Even now, I’m still wondering.
If you’ve read this far, and this often — you’ve probably been enjoying The83K for the length of our brief existence. Won’t you help us get bigger and better and become a Patron?
Thank you for subscribing to and spending time with The83k. This newsletter will remain free for you, friends and food fans, who are enjoying the food coverage here — but I’m hoping to offer in broader and more in-depth stories and features in the future (like the interview above.) I'd like to dedicate more time to it and make it a sustainable concern for everyone who wants more of that delicious, useful content (and frequent roundups of everything you like about food.)
Please consider becoming a Patron and help make The83k bigger and better.
OH AND THERE'S A BUNCH OF PERKS, TOO.
The first monthly roundup of The83k content will drop the first week of September — FOR PATREON SUPPORTERS ONLY!
Also: if you don't want to subscribe, or just want to make a one-time donation – OR want all the goodies but don't want to use Patreon, please feel free to use this link: paypal.me/theohahn
Again: thank you, friends!
Things you should make:
For those of you who find making a well-seasoned, well-textured pot of rice to be a bother, may I suggest trying your microwave? (Heresy, I know — but people, I’d rather you keep cooking strangely than not at all.)
Digging eggplant parm but don’t like all the thin slicing or multiple pre-cooking steps? Ditch the sog and give cauliflower parm a try.
Pies are hard. Things that taste like pies but are not pies are less hard.
This recipe for Roman rice-stuffed tomatoes looks simpler than it is (make the filling before stuffing, don’t try to make this a one-vessel dish) but holy FORK does it look worth it.
Links:
Is vegan meat kosher? Can Hindus eat cloned beef?
“Mimicking is fine; it poses no theological problems,” he said. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it still may just be textured vegetable protein. That said, most Hindu vegetarians eschew meat for ethical reasons. McDermott believes we’re at an inflection point at which consumers of all faiths are making choices that consider environmental problems with ethical implications.
“Cultured meat presents thornier questions Hindus have never had to answer. If there’s no perceptible harm, no animal killed in the process? That’s the central knotted question of diet and animal welfare. Where do you draw the line?” he said.
Looks like the new episodes of Roy Choi and Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show are awesome.
The Good Place returns September 26th, and hopefully, with it, more of Megan Amram’s food puns.
Things You Should Watch:
You can either make vegetarian food taste like some sort of meat analog (sometimes great, often bad) or make the veggies taste like the best versions of themselves. This burger falls into the latter category:
Um. Have you ever watched Cooking With Dog? Apologies in advance for sending you down this delightful rabbit hole:
There’s lots of food in the Steven Universe universe. The chow from the Restaurant Wars episode has always intrigued me.