BOSTON DIVISION:
#4: Mom's Veal with Prosciutto
The thing about dinner at our house: Mom cooked every night, as a rule. When Dad cooked, it was the exception, and so he got to do cool things like spend all Sunday making pizza, while Mom got to make dinner every night after she got home from work for four people. So she never got to make the exciting dishes, and never got to be the star. But the veal dish stands out. It was made in one of those thick ceramic Creuset stock pots. I don't remember the first time it was served, but it was before I knew what veal was, and I thought baby cow was some sort of crazy delicacy. There was also this thick cheese that looked like the insulation inside an indoor tennis court. And celery. And prosciutto. Why do we always eat prosciutto cold? It's fucking AWESOME hot. Wrap some around asparagus and sautee it in a pan for ten minutes and you'll agree. Prosciutto outclasses bacon in my opinion, an opinion that is probably formed from this dish. For years, this was the dish served on my birthday, or even when I came home from college. If this dish were to stack up against Dad's pizza in this bracket, it would be the onset of the kremlin civil war.
#5: Chicken Parm from Dag's
D'Agastino's is an old-school Italian deli in Arlington Heights. Since I moved out of the Northeast, I've been hard-pressed to find anyplace similar, but to be honest, there were a dozen places like Dag's within a ten minute drive from my house. But Dag's was the closest, and yeah, arguably the best. Half the store was a mom and pop grocery, the other half was a glass counter which it seemed like half of my classmates worked behind at one point or the other. An Italian Sub would be a good purchase. So would pasta salad, or buffalo chicken cutlets. But the footlong chicken parm was king.
WINNER: Blood is thicker than water, and veal stock is thicker than marinara sauce. If I was home for a weekend, the chicken parm would probably be the first meal I had. But if the veal was served that night, I'd be pissed that I'd spoiled my appetite.
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