Chile today

Pretty as a stained-glass window
Let me be honest about this right up front: You have to be slightly desperate to make your own chile sauce.
It’s a lot of work if you’re not hungry for it. That’s why I make a few quarts at once and freeze it in bags. Keeps the shakes at bay.
But if [...]

Hunger and memory Part IV: Mexican dilemma

El Modelo, originally uploaded by Flickr user Joey Harrison.
Most of the United States of America is closer to Mexico than Concord, New Hampshire.
That makes it a weird place to catch the Mexican bug. But there’s no accounting for taste. One day in 1989, I walked into a place in Concord called Hermanos and ate lunch. [...]

Seoul food

This squid really grabs you
I’ve long thought that Western New York ought to be fertile ground for Korean cuisine. In my admittedly limited experience, Koreans like spicy food, and they like to drink.
In a place where a pitcher of beer and a double hot order of wings approaches Nirvana for plenty of people, you’d think [...]

Dosa delight

Tearing open the dosa is like unwrapping a Christmas present, but tastier.
There is only one place I know of in Western New York serving the dosa, the quintessential southern Indian crepe.
Made of a fermented lentil-rice batter, the dosa straddles the border between crispy and chewy. Its size, some two or three feet across, gives the [...]

Viva la hamon!

Is farmed salmon the swine of the sea?
Farmed salmon has become so inexpensive at the supermarket that it attracts a lot of attention.
At the fish counter, that $3.99-a-pound sign can actually blot out my memory. All the times I wanted to enjoy my salmon, but found it dry, or flabby? Poof, gone.
I’m a sucker for [...]

Legal tenders

Pano’s isn’t bad, but there must be more out there
Here’s another dish that is almost too ordinary to mention in Buffalo, but never popped up in the 15 years I spent eating in other corners of the United States of America.
Ladies and gentlemen, the chicken open souvlaki. This particular one comes from Pano’s on Elmwood [...]

Apron strings

These shrimp make their eyes light up – thankfully
As toddlers, my children would eat practically anything. When she was four, which was approximately eleven zillion years ago, my oldest girl asked me for some of what I was eating. She tasted it, and then asked for more pickled octopus.
Now my eldest has become a fairly [...]

Saucy spuds

The intersection of cow juice, potatoes and cheese becomes a marvelous thing
Before the last bits of snow disappear from the yard, there’s still time for one of the great winter dishes – potato gratin.
My gratin technique has evolved considerably from the days of yore, when I spent what seemed like hours waiting for the potatoes [...]

Sample this

Hey, what’s with the food? A kid comes up to me in a white jacket, gives me a Ritz cracker with chopped liver, he says, ‘Canapés.’ I say, ‘Can a peas, my ass, that’s a Ritz cracker and chopped liver. Go get me a salami sandwich and a glass of wine or I’ll send you [...]

Chinese prospecting

It’s so tasty a couple hunks went missing before the picture was snapped
There are no first class Chinese restaurants in Western New York.
I wish someone would prove that statement false. But for all my investigation, I’ve found no data to suggest it’s wrong. Yes, I’ve been across the bridge to Ming Teh. Sorry.
New York City [...]