dinner

In honor of my buddy Charles, I have to say that, by way of celebrating being on the other side of my latest hospital visit (routine checkup), I decided to sex up my frozen pizzas after discovering that Papa John's has changed its website's format yet again, making it extremely hard to pay online unless you have certain methods of payment (I didn't see how I could use my usual Shinhan debit card; the only Shinhan Bank options I saw were ShinhanPay and Shinhan Credit Card). So—bye-bye, Papa John's, which is probably better for my wallet anyway, given how expensive pizza is in Korea. And frozen pizza, while representing a drop in quality from the restaurant stuff, is much cheaper than delivery pizza even after it's been sexed up. (Can I torture Charles with that phrase if I say it often and forcefully enough?)

I already had a package of salsiccia and the voluminous remains of a 2-kilogram package of pepperoni, so I bought a bag of shredded mozzarella (yeah, I know—shut up*), then used my bottle of passata to make what turned out to be a surprisingly good pizza sauce (the frozen pizzas came sauced and cheesed already, but only to a very stingy degree, so I made what turned out to be way too much sauce, most of which will become tomato soup).

The results were good: I can normally eat two whole frozen pizzas in a single setting, but this time, I came away satisfied by only one. I sauced delicately (it's a moderately spicy sauce, almost arrabbiata, "softened" a wee bit with a dollop of heavy cream), added a healthy layer of pepperoni, piled on some crumbles of sausage, then added some more mozz to the top. The pizza ended up twice as thick, which explains why only one was enough to satisfy me. I'll eat my other frozen pizza tomorrow before going back on my strict dietary regime (French word for "diet" = le régime, as in Je suis au régime, Je fais un régime).

out of the oven (200ºC for 12 minutes, about standard for most frozen pizzas; I just guess these days)

a slice with the head bitten off

final slice: major erectile dysfunction

If you watch enough Krispy Pizza Bros videos on YouTube, you know they like to talk about how a true New York slice has no flop jalop, i.e., no flaccidity to it, which is the standard that self-appointed, American Uncle Roger pizza judge Dave Portnoy uses when judging a slice. I might be able to achieve that rigidity with a few more minutes in the oven at 250ºC (bottom burner only), but I discovered during a pizza lunch with Charles** sometime back that the floppiness doesn't matter so much to me as long as the undercarriage has the appropriate amount of leoparding or leopard-spotting, which adds that delicious charred flavor to every bite. To me, that turns out to be much more important than the "firm undercarriage" business that Portnoy goes on about. I don't deny that there may be some relationship between floppiness and quality, but the ancient wisdom is that a good pizza is whatever tastes good when you shove it into your face hole.

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*Shredded cheese is known to have, depending on the brand, different types of anti-caking agents (light, subtle powders made from wood cellulose or potato starch) sprayed or dusted all over the cheese to keep it from sticking together inside the package. This is why YouTube cooks and Food Network chefs keep insisting you need to shred your own cheese from blocks, the per-unit-volume cost of which is always cheaper than the pre-shredded cheese. The block cheese also provides you with a higher-quality product. If there's any counterargument, it's that the quantity of anti-caking agent is negligible for most people, but for people with sensitive constitutions, it could affect levels of inflammation as well as your metabolism. Artificially anti-caked cheeses can also brown differently, melt differently, and even separate more easily. As always, the general rule is: The less processed, the better. That said, buying a bag of shredded cheese is undeniably way more convenient. Mea culpa.

** I have to hand it to Charles: He's a prof at Seoul National, where he got his doctorate, and where he still teaches, and he shows a great deal of (justified) pride in the many quality restaurants in his university's neighborhood. He seems to do what he can to support local businesses. I know that, when he recommends a local resto to me, it's going to be good.