I spent five days and ate seven pizzas in Chicago last week, none of which bore any resemblance to the bready behemoths sold abroad as Chicago pizza. A local friend warned me that even the deep-dish joints in the city catered strictly for tourists, but my foodie tour guide disagreed. “Oh, we eat it,” he said as a waiter dished up thick, buttery wedges of rich, tomatoey pie at Lou Malnati’s, a place that certainly had its fair share of blow-ins among our fellow diners, “but we also eat tavern-style pizza and Neapolitan-style pizza and Roman-style pizza … basically, Chicago just loves pizza.”

But then, who doesn’t? In the last few decades, pizza has conquered parts of the world that Caesar’s armies could only dream of, and it’s easy to see why. Quick to cook and easy to eat, even the poshest examples, such as this simple but elegant margherita from Michelin-starred chef Giorgio Locatelli (pictured above), tend to be great value for money. Plus, of course, they’re endlessly customisable to suit every taste and diet — you can easily make plant-based pizza (Meera Sodha and Anna Jones have some ideas for you) or even gluten-free: check out Thomasina Miers’s Torino-inspired chickpea-flour base or Nigel Slater’s golden polenta version. Helpfully, kids – who in my experience tend to be enthusiastic guzzlers of pizza – can make themselves useful in the preparation department, too; as well as Alice Zaslavsky’s traybake (pictured below), Yotam Ottolenghi has some pizza pinwheels that look like fun, while Claire Thomson throws open the possibility of foraging for toppings, too, with her nettle number.

You don’t need a wood-fired oven to make great pizza (though if you’re looking for a summer project, they do seem easier than you might think to build) — my favourite way to make it at home is in a frying pan, but, for a party, you can’t beat a platter of Rachel Roddy’s pizzette fritte, which go down a storm whatever the weather. Her interpretation of Pompeii’s answer to the pizza might inspire you to go old-school with fruit toppings, which also make an appearance in Stefano Manfredi’s banana and macadamia nut sweet calzone.

And, of course, pizzas aren’t the only fancy flatbreads in town — if you’re not up for a Hawaiian Neapolitan, what about a Turkish lahmacun, German flammkuchen or even, if this isn’t stretching the concept slightly, a Mexican tostada or two?

Personally, I’m fixated on the idea of perfecting a proper Chicago deep-dish pizza at home now that I’ve got a taste for how good this much-maligned Midwestern speciality can be. Dan Lepard’s recipe feels like a very good place to start — watch this space.

The best thing I ate | As soon as stone fruit season is upon us, I tend to gorge myself: it rarely makes it to the fruit bowl, let alone the kitchen, but the roast peaches I had at Tatte bakery in Boston, Massachusetts, served with labneh, granola and a drizzle of maple syrup, were so very good that it might be worth finally learning some patience.

What I’ve been reading | Chicago hosted the James Beard awards during my stay, which steered me in the direction of this excellent and winning piece by Helen Rosner in the New Yorker, also on pizza, and more specifically on the question of the best in the Big Apple. “The infinite variety of pizza beliefs is so universal that it slips into something almost Jungian, a window into the self and the shadow,” Rosner writes. “Tell me what you think is a perfect pizza and I’ll tell you who you are.” Deep (dish).

Surprise discovery | America, like eastern Europe, loves a pickle — I passed a billboard in Baltimore that ordered me to “chill out and eat a pickle” — but despite having eaten an inordinate number in the last couple of months, I’ve only just learned of the existence of Polish pickle soup. Refreshingly tangy, and aromatic with dill, it feels like a dish that would be as good chilled for lunch as it was served hot on an unusually chilly June evening.