Pizza, Buffalo-Style

Every city, state, region and even country has its own style of pizza. Buffalo is not necessarily known as being world famous for its pizza, but it does have a style all its own. I suppose being geographically located between two major pizza cities- New York and Chicago- makes pizza from Buffalo a happy medium of the two styles. Almost like the Goldilocks pizza, not too thin and not too thick. It’s just right. For a city that’s not real pizza destination, there are certainly a lot of pizzerias. One on every corner. Maybe even two. At one corner, near where I grew up, there are actually 3 pizzerias.

Pizza, to me, is all about memories. Just like wings, pizza made an appearance at every celebration we ever had. Birthday = pizza. Sleepovers = pizza. Also like wings, we never took our pizza eating lightly. It was all about the sheet pizza. A huge rectangle of cheese, sauce and pepperoni, the sheet pizza never failed to fill you up. I can’t tell you exactly how big it was, but I’m thinking roughly the size of your average doormat. OK, maybe it seemed that big because I was smaller. The point is, it was huge! Comfort food at its best.

But how did it taste?

The dough: Soft yet slightly crispy, doughy and inexplicably tasty

The sauce: Not chunky, not sweet, just simply seasoned tomato sauce

The cheese: Lots of it!

Toppings: Only one mattered- pepperoni! I’m pretty sure I have eaten my weight in pepperoni several times over. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… is there?

Now that I live in the “New York Metropolitan Area,” all I can get is the insanely thin, fold-it-in-half-when-you-eat-it pizza. Don’t get me wrong, it tastes amazing. However, I miss the texture, the heft, the sheer volume of toppings. I wonder if anyone delivers across the state. Actually, Bocce’s Pizza does! Programming speed dial right now…

Sponge Candy

One of the most amazing confections ever created, yet one of the most difficult to describe. Scientifically speaking, the “sponge” center is made from corn syrup, sugar, baking soda and vinegar. Sounds unappealing and slightly odd, right? Poetically speaking, it is magnificently light and airy with a crisp texture that just melts in your mouth on contact. The flavor is basically like caramelized sugar or molasses. The sponge is crunchy but full of little air bubbles created by the baking soda-vinegar reaction. In some parts of the country it is sold just as the sponge (under names like sea foam or honeycomb), but the key to Buffalo sponge candy is the super thick chocolate coating- milk chocolate, dark chocolate and (my absolute favorite) orange chocolate!

Sponge candy was and still is a staple at Christmas time. Those chocolate-covered squares of culinary luxury looked so good sitting in the candy dish, waiting for company to arrive. Well, some were actually triangles, but I’m sure they originally aspired to be full squares. How hard it was to resist just taking ONE piece! Who would notice? Well, at about $18 a pound these days someone is sure to miss those valuable pieces of heaven. It’s so special, in fact, that I just can’t bring myself to shove a whole piece in my mouth and chomp away at it. For as long as I can remember, I follow the same procedure when I enjoy sponge candy: bite the chocolate off the bottom, bite off two or three adjoining sides, extract the sponge and allow it to melt in my mouth, and then savor the remaining sides and top since that’s where the chocolate is the thickest. It’s just too good to gobble! (What? How do you eat it?)

Where does one get sponge candy? I have eaten sponge candy from Antoinette’s Sweets, Fowler’s and Watson’s. Personally, I am confident when I say Watson’s is THE best. Ever. Hands-down. Without a doubt. Period. (I still ask for it on my Christmas list!)

I try to share the love by bringing sponge candy to people who had unfortunate childhoods without it. If you want to get your own, below please find links to Watson’s and Fowler’s. (Apparently Antoinette’s does not have a website.)

Watson's Chocolates 

Fowler's Chocolates 

Wings!

How can I talk about food from Buffalo and not start with wings? Notice I did not call them Buffalo wings. As we all know, a buffalo does not have wings. They’re just wings. What about “chicken wings?” Sure, why not? But now that I think about it, what other bird’s wings would they possibly be?

For me, wings conjure up memories of many a birthday party. Seemed like a no-brainer that if you were having a birthday party- or any celebration- you served pizza and wings. What did everyone else eat? I just can’t fathom anything else (other than a Carvel cake perhaps). My favorite wings were from Santora’s. If we didn’t bring them home, we ate there as an occasional special treat after church on Saturday. And none of this ½ dozen or dozen wings nonsense. Our wings came in a bucket. That’s right, a BUCKET! 50 steaming, saucy, juicy, meaty wings ready to serve their duty in life. Anyone also remember when you could get 5 or 10-cent wings? Those were the days!

Back in the day, they came in 3 flavors: mild, medium and hot. Maybe extra hot or suicidal, but no fancified flavors like teriyaki, BBQ, lemon pepper, honey garlic or anything like that. Wings are made with chicken and hot sauce. That’s it. I’m a complete purist. Granted I’ve been tempted by other intriguing culinary options, but I just can’t bring myself to break tradition. That’s why I’m getting ready to enjoy some classic chicken wings with celery and blue cheese (never ever ranch dressing!) tonight during the Super Bowl. Coincidence that this post landed on Super Bowl Sunday? Not at all. It’s just too bad the Bills aren’t in it… maybe next year!

By the way, here is the one and only recipe I’ve ever used: Frank's Red Hot Chicken Wings 

Wings with blue cheese and celery... game time!

Buffalo Food

No, not the stuff they feed bison at the zoo. Buffalo, NY. The Queen City. The Nickel City. Home of the chicken wing!

I could easily ramble on about all that is delicious about Buffalo. Of course everyone knows about wings, but it is SO much more than that. Rather than one long essay about my favorites, each and every one will get its due in a separate post. They all hold a special place in my mind, my heart and my stomach. I make it a point to eat or stock up on them whenever I have the chance.

Here is what is on tap for Foodographic Memories:

• Wings
• Sponge candy
• Pizza (not unique to Buffalo, but Buffalo pizza is unique)
• The Friday fish fry
• Bison chip dip
• Ted’s Hot Dogs
• Mighty Taco
• Beef on weck
• Loganberry drink
• Wegmans
• Tastykakes (not from Buffalo per se, but they have special meaning to me)
• A nod to other Buffalo foods of note
• Foods that snuck over the border, eh!

To most outsiders, Buffalo may not seem to have much. Buffalo may not have a winning Super Bowl team, a Stanley Cup winner or the best reputation for its weather, but it certainly has killer grub. Why else would websites exist to fulfill a Buffalo ex-pat’s food jones? There is a special bond that forms between a Buffalonian and his or her food. No matter how long you’ve been away, Buffalo is always home and you’re always proud to be from Buffalo.

Polish Christmas

Christmas Eve always meant heading to my grandparents’ house in the Kaisertown neighborhood of Buffalo. We’d pile into the car, get to church early, and get a seat close to the back door so we could beat traffic out of the parking lot. Then it was a beeline to Nana and Poppa’s for dinner. Of course, being Buffalo, it was always cold. Often exceptionally so on Christmas Eve for some reason. However, their house was always toasty warm. All that cooking certainly helped. The oven and stove top were packed full of Polish goodness. If there were two stoves, they would have both been stuffed to capacity.

During my early years, the dinner crowd was quite extensive and included my great-grandmother (babci), great aunts and uncles, and various generations of cousins on my mother’s side. Many a folding chair made an appearance down the center of the “parlor.” Eventually it became a more intimate affair with just my parents, sister, grandmother and me, but I’m pretty sure we had just as much food for the five of us as we did for fifteen!

Polish Christmas Eve dinner fare, while not exactly the healthiest foods, is ridiculously comforting. Fish, pierogi, sauerkraut and mushroom soup are the staples. The fish and pierogi were fried, thus adding to their appeal. In fact, there was so much frying that I don’t recall a year when the smoke detector didn’t go off! Can you fry sauerkraut? Or soup? I’m pretty sure you can and my grandmother must have managed to find a way.

Back to the mushroom soup. Ask Don. It warrants its own paragraph. My mom grew up with this tradition and she never ate the soup. My sister and I never ate the soup. My dad, who married into the family, actually eats the soup. Before Don came with me for his first Christmas with my family, mom called to ask if he liked mushroom soup. Sure he did. What a weird question, he thought. Well, he never had Polish mushroom soup. To hear him tell the “story of the mushroom soup” never gets old. He never knew there would be specially imported mushrooms “the size of trees” in the soup. Not only that, he was basically bullied into adding heaping piles of mashed potatoes and sour cream to his bowl. “That’s the way we do it,” said Nan. So he did it, noticing that other than Nan, none of the other blood relatives ate the soup. Sucker! My sister’s boyfriend at the time didn’t eat the soup. Needless to say, he’s no longer in the picture. Hmmm… Eat the soup, welcome to the family!

It has been years since we’ve had the truly traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. Nan kept up hosting duties for quite a while, even after Poppa died. Lately, my mom is continuing the tradition. She learned to make pierogi and passed the recipe along to me. However, I have yet to actually make them myself. There is a lot of history behind those pierogi and I don’t want to disappoint. Besides, I don’t have a smoke detector in my kitchen.

First post: Welcome!

I love food. I love cooking, eating, looking at, looking for, buying, smelling, sharing, taking pictures of, reading about, hearing about, writing about, telling people about, and- most of all- reminiscing about it. Hence the name of my blog. I have been blessed with a foodographic memory. What is that? Well, simply put I remember my life through food. Food = memories. I can tell you exactly when I first ate a breakfast sausage. (I was 7 years old and on an Eastern Airlines plane en route to Orlando for a vacation to Walt Disney World. The ham sandwich on the return flight was not as glorious.) My first meal in Europe introduced me to the very sublime Taleggio cheese and, upon ordering my first gelato, I quickly learned how to say “Another” in Italian. (“Un altro,” by the way.) Now when I see recipes that use Taleggio, I am immediately transported to Nilus Bar on Lake Como in Varenna. And don’t even get me started on getting chocolate for our Easter baskets… that might warrant its own post!

Many of my memories, as you will learn, are tied to travel, though some just revolve around my family’s everyday life and traditions. I consider myself fortunate to have traveled quite a bit both as a child and as an adult. Thank you to my parents who saw travel as valuable family time and took us to many great places with lots of tasty food! Mom was a travel agent for a spell while I was still in school, so that helped. Thanks also to Don for continuing to feed my travel bug. Fortunately, he really does not mind at all!  I also chalk up my love of food to genetics. I’m Polish and Italian. Say no more. Pierogi, kielbasa, pasta. Not a bunch of salad eaters, we! Come to think of it, all we seemed to do was eat. I don’t remember ever doing homework. Did we ever walk the dog? I don’t think anyone ever gave me birthday presents. I’m pretty sure we just ate. When I visit my parents or they visit us today, all we do is eat. We go to kitchen stores as part of a fun day’s shopping. My Christmas list always has some kind of cooking item(s) on it. It’s all about food.

So where do I go from here? Now that you know a little about my quirky life in food, I will relive various foodographic memories for anyone who cares to care. As time permits. Being a teacher keeps me busy, though I always manage to involve food in my classroom any way I can! Do you remember what you learned in March of Fourth or Fifth grade? No. Do you remember the killer spread you had at the Kindergarten Thanksgiving feast? Of course you do! Do you remember the kid in preschool who freaked out and refused to eat a Twinkie because it had fuzz on it? Probably not, but I do.

Again, food = memories.