For this special issue, rather than reviewing a restaurant, I’m just going to talk about food. Autumn is upon us, and in Buffalo especially, that means that the advent of cold-weather comfort food. We have a ridiculous wealth of excellent restaurants here, but sometimes it’s better not to fight the weather, and to stay home and eat soups and casseroles and baked goods and, in general, untrendy things like your mom used to make.

Not that you can’t go out for these sorts of things; most of Buffalo’s restaurants are marvelously unpretentious. But there’s just something about having the oven on, steaming up the kitchen windows and filling the house with the warmth and scent of baking.

Steak and Mushroom Pie

STEAK AND MUSHROOM PIE

This is my father’s favorite recipe, as adapted by my mother. His mother made it with kidneys; my mother, markedly uninterested in handling organ meats, substituted mushrooms. She makes it every year for his birthday in October, so it is very much an autumn food for me. My mother, I might note, writes recipes like I write food reviews—they’re not so much scientific descriptions as they are stories about cooking.

Use any kind of steak, one pound per pie. Buy or make a double pie crust—a bottom and a solid top.

Cut steak up into bite-size pieces, dredge in flour with salt and pepper, and brown in oil or fat in a large, cast-iron frying pan. Remove and set aside. Brown one or two medium onions, cut up, and one 10-ounce package of mushrooms, washed and sliced. Put the meat back in and mix all together with savory (optional) and salt and pepper to taste. If the mixture is dry, add a cup or so of water and boil it up to get all the brown out of the pan.

Put the filling in the crust, put the top over it and bake at 350 for an hour or so, until the filling bubbles and the top is golden. Serve hot, or refrigerate overnight and serve cold.

As an added bonus, the fat in the meat makes the pie crust light and flaky—this is why so many good bakers use lard as their pie crust’s secret ingredient.

Beef Stew with Dumplings

BEEF STEW

WITH DUMPLINGS

For my birthday I always wanted beef stew. It’s been my favorite recipe my whole life. Unfortunately, my birthday is in August—which is too early for a cold-weather recipe like this. So I always eat it—now I’m old enough to know better—as soon as the weather starts to turn. Which is now. This one is nice because you can come home to it even if there’s no one waiting there for you—it’s a crockpot recipe.

Cut up a pound or so of stew beef into bite-size pieces. Dredge in flour with salt and pepper. Brown in oil in a large, cast-iron frying pan. Put into a crockpot. Put several cups of hot water into the frying pan and bring to a boil, then scrape pan and dump the water into the pot. (This doesn’t work if you use non-stick pans; it collects the flour and meat juices stuck to the pan and makes a broth base for the stew.)

Cut up carrots, potatoes, a piece of celery and an onion, enough to nearly fill the crock pot. Add salt, pepper, sage and hot water until the water is visible.

Cook on low for eight hours or high for four hours in crockpot. 45 minutes before serving, make dumplings as follows:

Mix 1-1/2 cups flour with two teaspoons baking powder and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Cut in three tablespoons shortening until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in 3/4 cup milk. Drop dough by large spoonfuls onto hot meat or vegetables in boiling stew (not directly into water). Cook 10-15 minutes uncovered. Cover and cook 10-15 longer.

Pumpkin Ginger Soup

PUMPKIN-GINGER SOUP

For the less-carnivorous among you, here is a wonderful vegan recipe. It’s a Buffalo recipe, too—Cafe 59 on Allen Street sent it in to Artvoice several years ago. Ironically enough, this is probably the simplest recipe I’ve ever seen for a cream-based soup, and the ingredients are all so non-perishable you can simply keep them on hand in your pantry for months at a time, for one of those nights when the autumn weather is less than glorious and you just don’t want to go out in it.

Into a large saucepan, pour 28 ounces canned vegetable broth. Season with one cinnamon stick, two whole cloves, 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper, eight tablespoons brown sugar, one tablespoon cider vinegar and one teaspoon salt. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer five minutes.

Remove cloves and cinnamon stick. Then add a 14-ounce can of unsweetened coconut milk, a 29-ounce can of solid-pack pumpkin, a generous heaping tablespoon of fresh ginger, grated. Bring all to a boil over medium heat, reduce heat and simmer for five minutes.

This is a substantial soup and is good served with crusty bread or, what the heck, croissants from a tube.

Swiss Cheese and Onion Soup

SWISS CHEESE

AND ONION SOUP

On the topic of soups, I have another one for you which is coincidentally also vegetarian. This one is hearty enough to be a main dish on its own.

Melt two tablespoons butter in a kettle. Add two medium onions, sliced fine, one or two cloves of garlic, diced, 1-1/2 teaspoons salt and two teaspoons dry mustard. Cook on medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until onions are very soft.

Gradually stir in one to three tablespoons flour. Add two tablespoons dry sherry and mix well. Add two cups water and one teaspoon prepared horseradish, stir well and cook five minutes more.

Warm 1-1/2 cups of milk (lowfat is okay). Add to kettle with 1-1/2 cups grated Swiss cheese. Stir thoroughly (a wooden spoon will work best) until well-blended and smooth.

Add pepper to taste (white pepper will look better); taste and adjust other seasonings as well.

Serve hot. Optionally, top with croutons.

LAZY MAN PIEROGI

Casserole. I don’t know why so many people knock casserole. It’s one of the easiest ways to warm up your kitchen and convince your dinner-mates you love them. Nothing, and I mean nothing, says true love like a big ol’ Pyrex crock o’ casserole. This one has borne repeated proof to how much my boyfriend’s mom loves her family.

Cook two cups of dry spiral noodles according to package directions. Drain.

In a casserole, mix cooked noodles with one can cream of mushroom soup, one pound of Polish sausage cut into bite-sized chunks, one can of drained sauerkraut, 1/2 onion, minced, and black pepper to taste.

Bake at 350 for about an hour. Serves four.

BUFFALO BILLS

HOT CHOCOLATE

This is a relic of a bygone era, back when the Bills were good. (Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.) The boyfriend’s family had season tickets and used to smuggle in a thermos of this to those nice cold late-season games, along with blankets and Feeter-Heeters. You can drink this at home watching the game on TV—it dulls the pain a little.

1 packet hot chocolate mix

6 ounces hot water or milk

1 ounce Bailey’s Irish Creme

1 ounce amaretto

1 ounce Kahlua

1 ounce Cointreau, Grand Marnier or triple sec

Combine, stir well and serve, with whipped cream if you feel fancy. Take care; this will get you plenty hammered if you aren’t careful, as it doesn’t taste as strong as it is. Note that triple sec is sweeter and less alcoholic than the alternatives.