Pie of the Week #16
I’m not much of a New York style pizza fan. Sorry. In the regional pizza battle, I fall squarely in the Chicago camp (the deep dish, not the thin crust. Chicago offers two powerful indigenous pizza styles…). But this week, as part of my triumphant turkey tribunal, I at least made a pizza based on a “sandwich” named after one of New York’s five boroughs: the Turkey Manhattan.
Before we dig in too far, it’s worth noting that the Turkey (or beef, or many other variations) Manhattan is decidedly not a New York food. It’s really right in line with our Amish/Mennonite-influenced cuisine here in the upper midwest (ie, lots of beige food, and at least one (often multiple) starch AND bread required at every meal). While the culinary masterpiece that is a stack of bread, meat, mashed potatoes, and gravy has become ubiquitous, it reaches its pinnacle here. Really. Anyone will tell you. Here’s a great article from the Sandwich Tribunal to prove my point. And the name “Manhattan” seems to be regional – get too far away from its Indianapolis origins, and it gets other names.
So, a cornerstone of midwestern cuisine from the circle city, in the form of a circular pie. What better way to offer adversarial compliance to requests for New York Pizza? Here it is, Turkey Manhattan Pizza!
The Pie
So, the turkey Manhattan pizza was instigated by my sudden need to use a whole turkey in the middle of January. I had made gravy to go with roast turkey breast and legs, and had some left over. I also had some left over mashed potatoes. After making turkey stock, I had shredded turkey: just bits of meat picked off the bones. So this was a natural solution.
- Neapolitan style pizza crust
- Turkey gravy
- Blobs of mashed potatoes
- Shredded turkey
- Shredded mozzarella
And, really, it was perfect! Seriously. Remember school lunches? When were the rare times you were actually excited to eat one? Pizza day, and turkey or beef manhattan day. Except this pizza has a crisp, tender, delicious, round crust, rather than an insipid, floppy, rubbery, rectangular one. And this Manhattan is built on that crust, rather than soggy white squish bread. And this gravy is deliciously homemade. And this turkey is tender shreds, not an odd-shaped piece of pale playdough. And these mashed potatoes are from our home grown Kenenebec taters, smashed with their skins, along with some garlic and cream cheese for extra yum factor.
I’ll be making this again. It’s at least as good as, if not better than, some of the Thanksgiving Pizzas I made. Really, I can’t think of a better way to get to carb coma. And, if we’re going to make a pizza without veggies, it may as well put us in a vegetative state!