It's funny; you miss different kinds of pork at different times, living in Turkey. Sometimes I feel like I would would sell my first-born child for some good chorizo, other times I heart for a succulent pork tenderloin. Lately, I've been jonesing hard for pepperoni pizza. You can get something that is called pepperoni pizza here, but I quickly realized that it was actually pepperoni flavored sucuk, ie, a fraud. When my dad was visiting recently, I asked him to bring me some pepperoni and he obliged with a stick of Boar's Head. My oven is not trustworthy enough to make a pizza from scratch, but I figured it could probably handle a doctored up frozen pizza. And today I decided to take the plunge.
The bodega by my place didn't have a plain cheese pizza, so I got their fancy Italian style pepperoni. Side note: isn't it actual trick that frozen pizza boxes play on you? The picture on the outside looks like this:
But what is inside the box invariably looks like this:
I picked off the sucuk, which looked crappy, and the olives and mushrooms (didn't want em anyways), so I was left with the least appealing part of any frozen pizza; the crust, sauce, and cheese. At this point I realized, again, how dumb it is t buy frozen pizza. All you really want is the crust, and it will invariably be awful, as will the sauce, probably sickly sweet, and vastly inferior to a can of tomato paste with your own herbs mixed in. Oh well.
I grabbed a hunk of my cheddar cheese reserves from the freezer, carved it up, and sprinkled it over the top, followed by a chopped onion, a hefty sprinkle of what smells to me like oregano but could be thyme, and, of course, the pepperoni. One of the nice things about DIY pizza is that you can finally have as much pepperoni as you've been wanting all along. They were ready to hit the oven:
I then got caught up in a New Yorker article about Justin Bieber's manager (I don't have full blown Bieber fever; more like a touch of a flush? He's a guilty pleasure. Shut up.) and semi-forgot about what was in the oven. Ooops. Luckily I like my pizza a little burnt-y. Voila, le dinner!
Not as good as the real thing, but not too bad either. I think regular, crappy pre-sliced pepperoni might actually be more like what I'm craving. But this was close enough to tide me over for the next two weeks, when I'm visiting Amereeka.
The bodega by my place didn't have a plain cheese pizza, so I got their fancy Italian style pepperoni. Side note: isn't it actual trick that frozen pizza boxes play on you? The picture on the outside looks like this:
A trained eye will immediately realize that something is not quite right about this pepperoni.
But what is inside the box invariably looks like this:
It actually looks better with the plastic wrap on, is the sad thing.
I picked off the sucuk, which looked crappy, and the olives and mushrooms (didn't want em anyways), so I was left with the least appealing part of any frozen pizza; the crust, sauce, and cheese. At this point I realized, again, how dumb it is t buy frozen pizza. All you really want is the crust, and it will invariably be awful, as will the sauce, probably sickly sweet, and vastly inferior to a can of tomato paste with your own herbs mixed in. Oh well.
I grabbed a hunk of my cheddar cheese reserves from the freezer, carved it up, and sprinkled it over the top, followed by a chopped onion, a hefty sprinkle of what smells to me like oregano but could be thyme, and, of course, the pepperoni. One of the nice things about DIY pizza is that you can finally have as much pepperoni as you've been wanting all along. They were ready to hit the oven:
I then got caught up in a New Yorker article about Justin Bieber's manager (I don't have full blown Bieber fever; more like a touch of a flush? He's a guilty pleasure. Shut up.) and semi-forgot about what was in the oven. Ooops. Luckily I like my pizza a little burnt-y. Voila, le dinner!
The wine was on sale at Real recently. It's decent, but not great. Especially on the second day.
Not as good as the real thing, but not too bad either. I think regular, crappy pre-sliced pepperoni might actually be more like what I'm craving. But this was close enough to tide me over for the next two weeks, when I'm visiting Amereeka.
