Pie Talk #27: Cheesecake

Good morning Pie Talk listeners. It’s fall (as of yesterday!) and thus, I think it’s time for cheesecake, a food people like to disagree about, if not with the vehemence of, say, barbecue or biscuits. No, it’s Italian versus Jewish, a real Lower East Side 1910 debate, on which I fall squarely with the Jews. So sue me!

The difference is ricotta (Italian) versus cream cheese (Jewish, though apparently these can tilt ricotta sometimes; let’s agree to ignore). People crow about Junior’s cheesecake, and the legendary Brooklyn deli is within walking distance of where I grew up, but I don’t love it, not sure why, the filling is aight but the crust is too spongy for my taste.

Anyway! The cheesecake recipe I offer is from New York Cookbook, by Molly O’Neill. As I mention in the audio, I knew Molly and ate with her more than once and think even cooked with her once and, when cracking the book to read the recipe just now, found she’d signed the book to me, which I’d had loooooong before she and I ever met and which shows the splotches and stains of a well-used cookbook.

As mentioned, Molly’s brother was Yankees’ slugger Paul O’Neill

Molly wrote other books, including the memoir Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball. She was also a writer and editor at the New York Times for many years. Molly died in 2019, and looking her Times’ obit just now, I see:

With American food writing today including many voices and cultures, it is easy to forget that Ms. O’Neill was doing so long before the globe-trotting Anthony Bourdain and the Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold were household names, at least in food-centric households.

And now they are all gone, and it’s a loss, but they leave us the food, including what in my opinion is the greatest collection of New York recipes ever, including the cheesecake recipe below xx

PS: I mention in the audio the chocolate chip cookies. That recipe’s here, and I might also mention that I baked a batch yesterday for the firemen next door, as a thank you for three of them carrying a heavy bookcase up to my fourth floor walk-up. When I saw them later in the day, they said they were mad at me. But why?

“BECAUSE I CAN’T STOP EATING THOSE COOKIES!” said the one who thinks my my name is Joyce. I haven’t corrected him because I think it’s sweet and funny, and an even older-fashioned name than Nancy!