In The News

As a food editor with deep Super Bowl experience, I am really enjoying how, like other national religious holidays, the "Big Game" is allowing folks to have fun with their food.

It has been daunting to deal with the barrage of e-mails from marketers for whom no angle is too lame to try to get coverage for their product.

But it's been fun to hear from food writers from around the country wanting to learn more about Pittsburgh food.

At The Salt Lake Tribune, my buddy Kathy Stevenson was cooking up a "Soup-er" bowl angle, as she put it, with soup recipes from favorite sports bars in town. When she asked about a signature Pittsburgh soup, I sent her some background on Wedding Soup.

She wrote: "P.S. Just for the record we're rooting for The Steelers. My son is a big fan of Troy Polamalu."

See the story at sltrib.com.

At the St. Louis Post Dispatch, I e-mailed with Joe Bonwich about Pittsburgh pizza, since he wanted to offer readers there pizza recipes for Sunday. His Packers Pizza is topped with Nueske's bacon, cheddar cheese and green onions. For the Steelers: A Roethlis Burger Pizza with black olives and roasted yellow peppers.

"I'd thought of a Roethlisberger calzone, where the filling never, ever stays in the pocket," he wrote, "but that seemed a bit obscure for the typical food-section reader."

Read him at stltoday.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking.

It'll be interesting to see what food writers come up with. Pittsburgh's being pitted against the Packers, foodwise, everywhere, and with just about every food. And drink: I've received several pitches for cocktail recipes, but who drinks cocktails during the Super Bowl -- especially Pittsburgh vs. the Pack?

I did like the name of the recipe from Glenfiddich brand ambassador Heather Greene: the "Terrible Toddy" (2 ounces Glenfiddich Scotch, 1/2 ounce sweet white vermouth, 2 dashes peach bitters, lemon twist). The importer of Russian Standard Vodka tossed out a "Donald Screwdriver."

Red Pack tomatoes lined up six Pittsburgh food bloggers to compete all week with six Green Bay counterparts. Until one hour before kickoff, the bloggers will cook up recipes that incorporate any of the Red Pack/Red Gold products, and whichever group posts the most on their blogs gets a tomato prize pack. The publicist wrote: "We are calling the competition the "2011 Red Gold/Red Pack Tomato Bowl."

Go into the red zone at feedstitch.com/pghtomatobowl/pittsburgh-tomato-bowl and feedstitch.com/pghtomatobowl/green-bay-tomato-bowl.

Does the Super Bowl say "tomatoes" to you? Parkhurst Dining Services comes closer to capturing it with what they're serving at local PNC locations tomorrow: Buffalo Chicken Dip, Italian Sausage Sandwiches, Steel City Chili, Pierogies, Chipped Ham Sandwiches, Steelers Cakes and, of course, Black and Gold Smiley Cookies. That's what I'm talking about!

Epicurious.com's Lauren Salkeld had the spreads covered in her recipes: For Pittsburgh, a menu of local favorites including barbecue-sauced ham sandwiches, fried zucchini, kielbasa and pierogies. "And for dessert, we suggest banana splits, which many believe were invented in Pittsburgh, plus Klondike bars, another Isaly creation."

The Green Bay menu is relatively cheese-y, with Cheddar Beer Soup followed by Sheboygan-Style Beer-Soaked Brats and Wisconsin Mashed Potatoes, with dessert of Cream Puffs with Lemon-Cream Filling.

Wrote the first commenter on the post: "Because I am getting SO VERY VERY TIRED of everyone in the culinary world being completely unable to associate Wisconsin with anything except cheese, this Wisconsin born and bred, die-hard Packers fan is going to feature a menu that has not a single cheesy thing on it. Come on, culinary world. Explore other Wisconsin items -- Ojibwa-harvested wild rice. Door County cherries and apples. Wild game and fish (trout, salmon, bluegills, whitefish, smelt, and on and on) from our many lakes and rivers. Locally picked berries from my freezer. Etc, etc, etc."

Also going anti-cheese this week has been Downtown's Six Penn Kitchen. Starting Monday, the place's popular cheese plate is for one week replaced with the "Pittsburgh Pride Plate" of kielbasa and kraut, "Hines" ketchup and potato pierogies.

General manager Chris Baierbach said, in one of the many such press releases I received over the past two weeks, "We certainly welcome Green Bay fans, but they won't get their Wisconsin cheese fix here. It's just a little reminder that they're in Steelers Country."

Two local chefs left Steelers Country to go to New York City, where, tomorrow morning, they'll take on the enemy in a "cookoff" on NBC's "Today" show. From the Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville, executive sous chef Corey Burns, helped by executive chef Jason Marrone, is to appear in a challenge with Nicole Steinmetz, a fourth-generation owner of Kroll's West restaurant right across from Lambeau Field.

The Church will present an array of fare including its new Untraditional Pittsburgh Pierogies. Made with sheets of local Fede pasta colored with squid ink and saffron respectively, the black and gold pierogies are filled with roasted turkey, cheddar, bacon and potato -- in a nod to another Pittsburgh creation, the Devonshire sandwich. The Church also plans to pour, with Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, some of its beer.

Ms. Steinmetz, in a phone interview from the Kroll's in Chicago, said she and her chef plan to present Wisconsin delicacies including Kroll's original cheeseburger (made with butter) and cheese curds.

Though it will be shot in the morning, that part of the "Today" show is to air here at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Meanwhile, through Sunday at the Church, you can try the pierogies and scads of black-and-gold specials, such as golden lemon pound cake with a black raspberry ice cream.

We can't say for sure who will win this weekend, but we know Pittsburghers pride themselves on putting up a good fight.

Consider the one waged for the past week by East End Brewing Co.'s owner, Scott Smith, and the brewery's fans. When he learned that ale from Hinterland Brewery in Green Bay was being sent to the White House for its Super Bowl gathering, Mr. Smith really wanted to make sure that some of his Pittsburgh brew made it there, too.

And so the campaign was on, waged on Twitter and Facebook, where yesterday "Send East End beer to the White House" reached 1,000 fans.

As of yesterday afternoon, Mr. Smith and friends still were working it. Go Pittsburgh!