Hungry for More

South Buffalo's Blackthorn on Food Network Mon. night

Another celebrated Western New York restaurant gets some national screen time Monday night as the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" visits Blackthorn Pub in South Buffalo.

Host Guy Fieri included the Blackthorn, at 2134 Seneca St., in a sweep of Buffalo places
in August. He made it to the Lake Effect Diner, Sophia's, Grover's on Transit Road, and Earl's Drive-In, among other places.

The show airs at 10 p.m. tomorrow, that's Mon. Feb. 1, on the Food Network.

At the Blackthorn, they're having a viewing party starting at 8 p.m. Monday, two hours before the show airs.

Recipe: Grilled salmon with mango salsa from "Everyday Indian"

Today's Buffalo News explores the simple, no-fuss Indian cuisine of Vancouver cooking teacher Bal Arneson. Here's her recipe for Grilled Salmon with Mango Salsa. She recommends wild-caught sockeye, but other salmon will work.

Grilled Sockeye Salmon with Mango Salsa

(From "Everyday Indian" by Bal Arneson)

Serves 4

Salmon is a very forgiving fish. You can bake it, grill it, pan-fry it, or barbecue it, as long as you do not overcook it. Salmon is full of nutrients and healthy fats, and this combination with mango salsa, makes a gourmet dish. Serve it with brown basmati rice and grilled vegetables.

Salsa
1/2 mango, finely chopped
2 tablespoon mango juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix all the ingredients and let sit for 5 minutes while you grill the fish.

Salmon
2 pounds salmon fillet
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sambar powder
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/4 teaspoon salt

Gently rub the salmon fillet with oil and season with the sambar powder, garam masala, and salt. Preheat the barbecue to medium-high and place the salmon skin down on the grill. Cook for about 12 minutes, until the fish flakes with gentle pressure from a fork.

To serve, place a piece of salmon on each plate and top with a spoonful of mango salsa.

Recipe: Cherry tomato and paneer salad from "Everyday Indian"

Today's Buffalo News explores the simple, no-fuss Indian cuisine of Vancouver cooking teacher Bal Arneson. Here's her recipe for Cherry Tomato and Paneer Salad. Paneer is a fresh cheese easy to make at home. It can be found where Indian ingredients are sold, as well as the chat masala, which is a sweet-and-sour spice mixture.

Cherry Tomato and Paneer Salad

(From "Everyday Indian," by Bal Arneson)

Serves 4

When I create recipes, some are inspired by my childhood experiences, some are inspired by the fruit and vegetable aisle of a grocery store, some are accidental discoveries, and some are just because I like to see different colours on the plate. In this recipe not only do the organic cherry tomatoes taste like candies, but they also have gorgeous rich colour. This is another very quick recipe, especially since I always use leftover paneer from other dishes to make the salad.

20 cherry tomatoes
1 cup paneer, pan-fried and cut into small bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup toasted pecan halves
1 tablespoon chat masala
2 tablespoon flaxseed oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
1 teaspoon warm honey

Put all the ingredients in a large salad bowl. Mix everything until the chat masala is evenly distributed. Enjoy!

Mercy, that's some fine olive oil

The Bible doesn't exactly say what sort of oil everyone's getting anointed with, but something tells me Brothers of Mercy Extra Virgin Olive Oil would do.

The Catholic group, which runs a rehabilitation center in Depew and other health care facilities, has started selling private-label extra virgin olive oil from California, to help with fund-raising.

Peter Eimer, the chief executive officer of Sacred Heart Home, said the idea came up after a friend named Dan Vercere moved to Chico, California several years ago to operate an olive processing plant. Last fall Eimer visited Vercere's operation, West Coast Products. He noticed a lot of private labeling, and a bottle was born.

The oil is available at the gift shop in the Brothers of Mercy's rehabilitation center on Bergtold Road in Clarence. The 16.9-ounce (500 milliliter) bottles are $11.99 there.

It's also available at local outlets including Dash's markets, Mardee's Restaurant, the Asa Ransom House, Birdwalk, Chef's Restaurant, Clarence Pizza, The Podge and the Buffalo Club, Eimer said. A deal with Tops is in the works.

The premium California oil comes from olives crushed within 90 minutes of harvest. It's gotten rave reviews from local chefs, Eimer said. And if you just want to nosh? It's certified kosher, too.

Merge has reopened; Costner benefit Monday

On Monday night, friends of Ricky Costner Jr. are throwing a party in memory of the Merge sous chef, killed last week by a co-worker.

At 6 p.m. at the Towne Ballroom, 681 Main St., it'll be a night of "raising money, raising awareness, and raising the roof in Little Ricky's honor." A $15 donation is suggested.

There will be music and free food, but a cash bar, a silent auction and a dart gift board.

Merge's Sarah Schneider said the restaurant reopened Thursday, returning to its regular hours, with one exception: this Monday night, for the benefit.

Make cassoulet in WNY, or order it?

Cassoulet is one of those dishes that gets in people's heads. A plate that demands full attention, so lovely you miss it when it's gone. Then even years later, you get hungry just reading its name. A Metafilter discussion about it is filled with memories. Moderator vacapinta found himself compelled to make a batch, then posted the picture above.

And they say the Internet is bad for your health.

I can't say I remember cassoulet well, myself, because I've never eaten it. It's on my list of "have to try one day" foods, but I'm not sure whether I'd try to make it, or just look for a place that serves a proper version.

Cassoulet is a casserole of white beans, meats and spices, hailing from southwestern France. As it cooks for hours in a low oven, the meats add savor to the beans, until it's a tender, aromatic crock full of restorative stew. Which meats depends on where you are, this Saveur story says.

Convention has it that the cassoulet of Castelnaudary is based largely on pork and pork rind, sausage, and (sometimes) goose; the Carcassonne variety contains leg of mutton and (occasionally) partridge; and the cassoulet of Toulouse includes fresh lard, mutton, local Toulouse sausage, and duck or goose.

Are there places in Western New York selling it? Or would you have to cook it? I'm not sure what it would take to track down the right ingredients in Buffalo, but I suspect it'd be possible. Garlicky sausage and white beans we have, and I've seen duck confit from D'Artagnan in local stores. (The D'Artagnan people also sell a kit for about $100 with shipping, if you want to pony up.)

A Saveur recipe lays out the basics. But where would you find pork rind? Could it possibly be worth the trouble?

Searching for cupboard-clearing recipes

Need to feed people without the luxury of a grocery store run? Stocking your blizzard pantry, the focus of today's News story, will help.

But if you haven't had the foresight, and the electricity hasn't failed yet, there are several Internet sites that will offer recipe suggestions if you detail what's in your cupboard and fridge.

Recipe Bridge searches cooking sites, returning recipes from a multitude of sources that would take hours to comb through.

Cookin' with Google asks you to type in the main ingredients and details like method of cooking. Then it uses the Google search engine to bring you recipe links. Slightly more streamlined than a raw Google search, especially if you're not conversant in search strings.

Google's own recipe search engine is checkbox-based, if you are too lazy to type.

SuperCook offers recipes based on keyword searches, too. But it adds other ingredients you would need to the individual recipe blurbs. You can decide whether you still want to make the dish without Worcestershire sauce and raisins.

RecipePuppy makes it easy to refine your search. After it returns a bunch of recipes, users can click to exclude ones relying on ingredients they don't have.

The broccoli's screaming, you just can't hear it

That's the provocative notion raised by New York Times science columnist Natalie Angier in a piece last month headlined "Another Challenge to Ethical Eating: Plants Want to Live Too."

She adds up some interesting research showing plants reacting swiftly to fight off threats, writing:

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

Lots of people talk about ethical eating, and do their best to make informed choices about what they consume to survive. Lots of those folks are vegetarian or vegan.

Imagine how it would transform the entire discussion if humans discovered, after all this time, that wheat feared the reaper too.

Food fight: Alice Waters vs. Caitlin Flanagan

Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, famous in food circles for influencing American restaurants and home cooks to prize local vegetables, fruit and meat, has suggested that schoolchildren should be taught more about food. Specifically, where their meals come from, how to grow vegetables, and more, a curriculum designed to make them more educated consumers. Her restaurant's foundation puts its money where her mouth is, running the Edible Schoolyard program.

Who could argue with that? Caitlin Flanagan could. A conservative writer for The Atlantic with a strong contrarian bent, Flanagan suggests that children involved in school garden programs are wasting their time. She writes:

What evidence do we have that participation in one of these programs—so enthusiastically supported, so uncritically championed—improves a child’s chances of doing well on the state tests that will determine his or her future (especially the all-important high-school exit exam) and passing Algebra I, which is becoming the make-or-break class for California high-school students?

Poor children would be better served by hitting the books instead of weeding, Flanagan argues, because it's a more direct route to healthy eating, as getting a good job will more likely lead them to eat more healthy food:

The suicidal dietary choices of so many poor people are the result of a problem, not the problem itself. The solution lies in an education that will propel students into a higher economic class, where they will live better and therefore eat better.

It's a provocative argument. If you were a school superintendent, how would you slice it?

Via.

Owners: Want in on spring WNY Restaurant Week?

Last year's Western New York Restaurant Week brought out crowds to try new places for dinner, and I've heard praise from several of the places that participated. I've also heard complaints from operators that they didn't know how to get involved in time.

Hopefully this will help.

Attention independent restaurant operators of WNY: It's time to make the list for the spring version. It'll run Mon., March 8 through Sun., March 14, said Vince McConeghy of LocalFoodService.com, who helped organize last year's effort. Here's the link to the sign-up page. You have to register a free account at LocalFoodService.com, if you don't have one already.

As before, LocalFoodService.com will publish the listings online so hungry people can search for deals at favorite places, or reasons to try new ones. Any independently operated Western New York restaurant that provides the required information can participate, McConeghy said.

When the guide is posted next month, it'll be here.