Never had pasta stick in the boiling water, dunno what some people are doing to their pasta here. Best thing is just taking it right from the boiling water to the sauce before it’s done, add some pasta water in there, last thing toss a bit of olive oil in. Throw basil on top to serve if extra fancy.
The $8 Munchkin 10oz Sippy Cup. It’s technically made for toddlers but it excels over any other travel mug unless you want insulation. I don’t care about insulation because I don’t want to wait an hour until it’s a good drinking temp. Instead of some stupid spout mechanism that gets dingy and can’t be washed in the dishwasher, there’s a simple silicone lid you can drink from on all sides, and it’s all dishwasher safe and super easy to clean. It also contains a perforated screen perfect for steeping tea leaves or cardamom tea. Of course there’s the brilliantly simple spillproof aspect as well. I’ve had mine for 4 years and there’s zero wear on it.
I got the one without handles so it’s just a round cup, fits in the car cupholders that way. There’s a whole bunch of customizations like that though, you got handles, different sizes, colors, materials, even an insulated one, and all interchangeable parts from what I’ve seen. There’s a stainless steel one that looks like any other travel mug.
Pineapple on pizza is such a forced debate, nobody normal sincerely cares that much, and anyone who does is either pretending or has a toddler-level approach to food. The “authentic Italian” gatekeeping is also incredibly stupid and ironic, given Italy’s history of appropriating other culture’s foods then claiming they are the arbiters of the most “authentic” version of said food.
My fav dolce pizzas to make are cinnamon date puree with pecans and brown sugar sprinkled over top, or a sliced pear/apple with brie and a Balsamic drizzle.
The hilarious pizza regulatory body in Italy says it’s not real pizza though!
This is maybe a hot take but some of the most authentically branded and certified pizza in Italy happened to also be some of the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten, and the best pizza I had in Italy was no better than a good quality pizza anywhere else. I mean they’re damn good pizzas, but turns out baking a circle of dough with tomato sauce and cheese on it is a pretty basic thing to do well. And yeah I know there’s complexity in all of this but it’s not materially complex. Use the proper flour and hydration, knead it well, let it cold ferment for a day, shape it properly. Oh you didn’t use the Roma tomatoes from Mt Vesuvius? Sorry not real pizza.
Also the demand for authentic Italian pizzas from foodies in North America has created some of the worst pizza abominations, because the skill required to shape a ball of dough by hand isn’t widely present in the service industry workforce. Like yeah when the right person is in it’s great, but even at these upper range places tough gummy dough inconsistently shaped is common. “Never frozen though so it’s real!” Nobody can taste the difference between frozen dough that’s been thawed, let to rise, and baked, if anything the longer ferment time makes it taste better.
If you can’t tell I detest the ironic authenticity trend in these heavily market-researched upper range investment restaurants right now. That’s not even to say the notion of authentic food is bullshit, but it seems like a lot of these type of places are more focused on creating a commodified form of what people think authentic food is, than actually making good food. Unfortunately this trend has plagued the humble pizza. I think the way to judge if a pizza is “real” is if you can consume it while walking down a street having a conversation, that’s real pizza.
What all of this effort should really go to… Italy should invalidate the Italian ancestry of anyone involved with calling Chicago deep dish “pizza.” That shit is a casserole, delicious as it may be. NOT PIZZA
I dunno cause dried fruits are pretty normally served with cheese, and if the starch was a baguette or cracker instead of pasta it would be considered almost boring. People add ketchup to mac’n’cheese which I think is gross, but to me that’s a stronger and sweeter taste than rasins.