Pizzeria Uno and the Mysterious Origins of Deep-Dish Pizza

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The only photo of Riccardo and deep-dish pizza known to exist (March, 1945)

Presented by Peter Regas
PizzaHistoryBook.com

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Who invented deep-dish pizza? Is there a more controversial question in Chicago food history? There’s little doubt the pizzeria at 29 East Ohio Street in Chicago- originally named “The Pizzeria” later renamed “Pizzeria Uno”- served the original deep-dish pizza. But despite decades of debate and speculation, no one has definitively identified who created the pizza style that now has a market niche worth hundreds of millions of dollars and that -rightly or wrongly- branded Chicago, as a deep-dish pizza town. Continue reading →

Ossoli Cookbook: A fundraiser for the first public beach in Highland Park, Illinois

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Presented by Highland Park Public Library’s Cookbook Club
with Highland Park Historical Society and Us!
 
 
We are encouraging people to prepare a recipe from this antique community cookbook and discuss the results. This cookbook is available online via the University of Illinois. Certainly you are welcome to sit in on the discussion and not have cooked anything!

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The Making of James Beard, An American Legend

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Presented by John Birdsall, Author,
The Man Who Ate Too Much

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Food of the past that comes to us through recipes and cookbooks can appear to be fixed evidence of what generations before us ate, their tastes and preferences. John Birdsall says that his research for The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (Norton, 2020) challenged all his assumptions about that. Continue reading →

Mock Goose and Lord Woolton’s Pie: Shopping, Eating, and Cooking ‘On the Ration’ in World War II Britain

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Annette Laing, 
Author, Academic, Public Historian

When war broke out in 1939, the British people, long dependent on imported foods, found themselves thrown back on their own resources. Sure, they had a little help from their American friends, much of it in the form of powdered eggs and Spam. Continue reading →

How the Frugality of Rural Foodways Reshaped this Nationally Acclaimed Chef

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Presented by Vivian Howard
Chef, Author, PBS Host

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Vivian Howard moved from New York back to her rural hometown to open a fine-dining restaurant that she hoped would reshape the palates of eastern North Carolina. But an encounter with collard kraut and a trip to “America’s largest pork display” ignited her interest in the traditional foods and culinary techniques unique to the Carolina coastal plain she calls home. Continue reading →