Off Belay Cafe

I love food.

Despite the look on my face, I really am enjoying that meal.

In my mind, there is no better reason to start cooking: love of food.  Once I started cooking for myself, I gained a much greater appreciation for what goes into making a meal, and that made me love the meal even more.  When you've made something yourself, you're always more proud of it than if you had just thrown money at someone in exchange for what they did, and you appreciate it more.  Once you realize how easy it is to do yourself, you're really in trouble.  Then you want to make it yourself, all the time, half because you want to eat it, and half because you just want to prove you can do it.

At least, that's how it is for me.

The first thing I can remember cooking All By Myself was tapioca pudding.  I loved it when Mom made it, and asked for it often enough that she finally told me, "the recipe's right on the box.  You make it.  I'll help if you need it."  I made it regularly after that, and was just as proud of myself every time.  Go ahead and laugh. I was a kid.  I was allowed to be proud of pudding.

A friend of a friend, searching for a topic during an awkward silence, once told me, "I hear you're quite the cook.  How did that start?"  I shrugged and told her, "I got hungry."  That's essentially true.  Despite the tapioca, countless campout meals made on Boy Scout outings, and helping Mom in the kitchen, I don't think I really started cooking in earnest until I moved out of student housing in college.  I knew that I could, but until then, I didn't really need to start.  I wish I had.  Mom was hands-down the greatest cook I've ever known.  I'd love to be able to ask her how to do some of the things I want to do now, or even just show her some of the things I can do now.  Mom is the real reason I started cooking.  I'd settle for being half the cook she was.

While I was in grad school, my main focus was getting through grad school.  My culinary range was limited, and my ambitions were low.  Honestly, my ambition was survival.  I think grad school cooking is like that for anyone who isn't in culinary school.  I never stooped to Ramen, but there was plenty of macaroni, and a cookbook full of recipes with no more than four ingredients.  Luckily, Dad bought me a Crock-Pot at some point, and a cookbook to go with it, and I could feed myself for a week or more on one Crock-Pot full of ... something.  It didn't matter.

Later, I bought a kitchen staple: the Betty Crocker cookbook.  I bought that particular cookbook for another recipe I remembered from childhood.  We had always called it Hot Fudge Brownie Pudding.  There is no reason to call it anything else, but I knew Betty called it something different, and I remembered enough from the one time I had made it in high school to recognize it in the book.  I could give Betty the credit for getting me to expand my horizons, but really, the credit goes to Dad.

After grad school, nobody wanted to hire me.  Nobody wanted to hire Dad, either.  He started doing some home-repair work and hired me.  We'd fix people's houses during the day and play in the kitchen at night.  Dad had some basic kitchen sense, but neither of us really started cooking until Mom was gone.  We both learned an awful lot that year.  Mom might have inspired me to be a cook, but Dad's the one who taught me how to fake my way through it and still make it look good.  Without him, I don't know how long it would have taken me to learn how to improvise with food.  He got really good with meats, stews, soups, and pie crusts.  I got pretty good with cookies and breads.  Between us, we were ready to tackle anything.

Which brings us, finally, to why I started this blog.  A few years ago I started a new challenge: three new recipes a month.  Then I added one improvised recipe a month.  I could wing it entirely, or build upon something else.  When I moved in with the Chief Taster, I suddenly had to make a lot more food each month.  I started sharing pictures of what I had made online, and I was always confused by how impressed people were over things I thought had been pretty easy.  I realized that despite our culture's fascination with food, a lot of people are still intimidated by the process that lies between the raw material and what lands on your plate.

Shelling crawdads for jambalaya

That's where I come in.

I went to school to become an engineer.  My masters degree is in management.  Besides Boy Scouts and having my mom as my mom, I have no background whatsoever in the culinary arts.  But I can still do it, and if I may be so bold, I'm getting pretty good at it.  Point being: if I can do it, anyone can.

Cooking is not the dark, mystical alchemy many TV chefs would have you believe it to be.  There's no reason to be afraid of it, and the only thing keeping anybody from being good at it is their own reluctance to try.

Hence the name of the blog.

Among my many hobbies outside the kitchen is one of my first loves: climbing.  In climbing, the belayer is the person who controls the rope to make sure the climber doesn't fall all the way to the bottom.  That's an important point: the belayer doesn't keep you from falling.  He just keeps you from falling all the way.  I'd like to say he keeps you from falling too much, but some of that responsibility lies with the climber.  Every climber falls at some point.  It's a risk you take, and as long as you don't get injured, it's actually kind of fun.  The same applies to cooking: there will be mistakes.  The mistakes can be fun.  Roll with it, and try again.

The climber is that idiot in the black shirt (me).  The belayer is the much taller gentleman in yellow.

There's a system of calls used to communicate between climber and belayer.  We keep these simple, because sometimes you are very far away from your belayer, out of sight, and trying to yell through any variety of background noise or inclement weather.  The idea is to yell something they'll recognize, even if they don't hear it clearly.

One of those calls is "off belay."

The climber yells this to let the belayer know that the climber has reached the top of the route, set up an independent anchor, and no longer relies on the rope (or belayer) for safety.  The belayer's response is "belay off."  For me, this is one of the more exhilarating moments in climbing a route.  You're at the top, or at least pretty far from the bottom, and without the belayer, you're essentially on your own for a little bit.  The biggest real risk is that you do something silly and drop the rope, which means you have to wait until somebody else can climb one up to you, or lower one from the top, if that's an option.  Still, when you go off belay, every climber is very careful.  You can't make any mistakes at that point, or you could really ruin your day, as well as that of anyone upon whom you might land.

I'm calling this project the Off Belay Cafe because it's about taking that risk of trying something exciting and new, and that moment when you're all by yourself, with no back up, and you know that you've done it.  You have won the day, or at least the pitch.  It may not have been clean, it may not have been easy, but it is always worth it.  Even if it's just tapioca.

I don't advise doing crazy things while climbing, but trying crazy things while cooking is a lot of fun, and it almost never ends in splattery doom.  I'll try to keep the esoteric climbing references down to a manageable level, because despite the name, this site is about food, and the goal is to make cooking fun, easy, and approachable for everyone.  There will be lots of my own experiments with food, How To articles on general skills, and what is commonly called Food Porn.  (If you're looking for the other kind, keep clicking, bub.)  I'm always open to questions and suggestions.  Remember: I'm learning, too.  Now go to your kitchen, flip open a cookbook to a random page, and go Off Belay.  Cheers!

Ass-Kicking Apple Pie

For a while now I've had a goal of devising an Ass-Kicking Apple Pie.  I managed a pretty good first draft a few weeks ago when I made this naked apple pie.

It had great apple pie flavor, and what I thought was a pleasant amount of heat.  The Chief Taster had only one piece, which makes me think the heat might have been too much for her delicate German palette, but perhaps she was just eschewing extra servings of dessert.  Problem is, I failed to take notes on what I did, and couldn't remember the ratios well enough to duplicate it this time.

But I still gave it another try.

We had a couple friends visit recently.  We knew they'd be in for several days, and I opened up food requests long before they arrived.  They only specified pie, which is how we entered Round Two.

Sadly, there isn't much food porn for this post, because I was talking the husband of the pair through making a batch of Bacon Cinnamon Rolls while I made the pie.  There was just enough room in our tiny kitchen for both of us to work, and my usual ritual of taking pictures was forgotten.

whole-wheat bacon cinnamon rolls, pre-baking

Two-Crust Pastry:
2 C all-purpose flour
1 t salt
2/3 C shortening
2 T oil
4 to 6 T cold water

This uses the same ratios I tried with the quiche crust earlier; just double it to make a two-crust pie.  I wanted to see whether I'd get the same effect I found in the quiche, when the crust pulled away from the pie dish.  If it did, it was nowhere near as pronounced, but apple pie is a much wetter dish than a baked quiche, and I think that played a big role in weighing down the pastry.  I also had a little trouble extracting pieces intact from the pie dish, but I later realized it's because we didn't allow it the specified cooling time.  Leftover slices lifted out easily, but at the time we weren't willing to give it the two hours cooling time called for in the original recipe; classy presentation is hardly a reason to wait before dessert.

Mix flour and salt in a medium bowl.  Cut in shortening and oil using a pastry blender.  Add water 1 T at a time, sprinkling it over the dough and tossing the mix with a fork until all flour is moistened.  I'm going to add a little to BC's notes here.  As you add oil and water, tossing all the time, larger clumps of dough will form.  Eventually, as with all dough, your hands are going in there.  This is that time with pie dough.  No matter what I'm making, I tend to use my non-dominant hand to get in the dough so my more capable hand is left clean for fine motor skills like adding a teaspoon of vanilla, or cracking eggs, or whatever is called for in that particular recipe.  If this works for you, do it.  If not, find your own favorite method.  In any case, when you start to get clumps of pie dough larger than aquarium pebbles and closer to marbles, it's time to stick a hand in there and squish stuff together.  You should be able to work all the flour into a single cohesive dough ball.  It will feel slightly oily; that's ok.  It's pie crust.  The oils make it easier to work and roll when you reach that point.  For now, make sure you can get that cohesion, and try to avoid adding too much water.  If you grasp your doughball tight enough to sink your fingers in a little and liquid dribbles out, you've gone too far.  If you're worried about hitting that point, add water in very small increments.  You'll get a good feel for it as you make more pies.  When you have a nice, cohesive doughball, put in a sealed container in the fridge for an hour or so and get started on the pie filling.

That's also when I opened a beer, but that step is optional.

Ass-Kicking Apple Pie, Draft 2:
1/2 C brown sugar
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1 t ground cinnnamon
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1 t cayenne
dash of salt
6 C thinly sliced baking apples (see notes, below)
2 T firm butter (optional)
1 T sugar (approx.)

I used Granny Smith apples, mainly because I know that Mom tended to use Granny Smith apples or Macintosh whenever she made pies, and Macs aren't in season right now.  The original recipe says to peel the apples.  I didn't.  Numerous sources tell us that the peel carries a significant amount of an apple's nutritional value, and we want a healthy decadent dessert, so leave the peel.  There's a reason most recipes specify peeling the apples first: apple peels don't soften much when they cook.  If you slice your apple so that you end up with a full section, with peel surrounding the flesh, you'll have a ring of peel that will come out in one piece when someone tries to get a simple bite of pie.  Don't do that.  When you slice the apple, do it in thin little wedges, so that none of the slices have a large section of peel.  I promise I'll illustrate this fully the next time I make a pie.  For now, you'll just have to trust me.  Or peel the apples.

Throw all your sliced apples into a large bowl.  Put the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt in a smaller bowl and mix them well, then add them to the apples and toss to coat.  When the filling's ready, set it aside and get the pastry out of the fridge.

Separate the pastry into two roughly equal parts.  One should be slightly larger than the other; we want that one first.  Cookbooks will tell you to flour the work surface, roll out the dough, and lift it up to put it in the pie dish.  If you can do that, more power to you, and my congratulations as well.  I'm not that cool yet.  I use plastic wrap, despite my continued inability to handle it without swearing.  Protip from my aunt: wipe down the work surface with a damp cloth before laying down the bottom sheet of plastic wrap.  That will help the plastic cling to the work surface and keep it from moving around under the dough as you roll it.  Flatten the larger dough ball a little with your hands, then put a second sheet of plastic wrap over it.  Use a rolling pin (or a wine bottle) to roll out the dough.  Move the pin as you work, crossing the center of the dough from several angles to maintain a round shape and uniform thickness.  When it is a little larger than the diameter of the top of your pie pan, remove the top sheet of plastic.  Slip one hand under the bottom sheet of plastic, and lift it from the work surface, and turn it into the pie dish, keeping it centered.  Work your fingertips around the bottom, pushing any air bubbles out from under the dough, then carefully peel off the plastic.  Press the dough to the sides of the pie dish, and make sure no air bubbles get trapped.

Spoon filling into the pie.  Next is the step I nearly forgot: cut those 2 T butter into little pieces and sprinkle them over the apples.  I forgot until the top crust was in place, but it hadn't been sealed yet, so I just folded it over, buttered half the pie, then flipped the fold to butter the rest.  No worries.  If you forget it entirely, it's optional anyway, so don't sweat it.  Roll out the second doughball, and put it on top of the pie.  Remember to remove all the plastic before baking, or it will smell bad while baking, and possibly kill people when they eat it.  Seal the two crusts together with your fingers, working your way around the pie's top edge.  Pierce the top crust with a sharp knife in several places (write your initials or draw a picture if you want, but keep it simple).  Brush a little water over the top, sprinkle with some sugar (about 1 T), and bake in preheated oven at 425F 40-50 minutes.  The top should be golden brown, and juices will bubble up through the crust vents, possibly drawing your initials in dark, sticky apple goo.

As you can tell, the separation between crust and plate wasn't as pronounced as it was in the quiche, but it's there.  A handy trick, and it originally came from a last-second substitution when I ran out of Crisco halfway into making a quiche.  There's probably a lesson in that, but I'm not going to guess what it might be.

What about the goal of making an Ass-Kicking Apple Pie?  The wife half of the couple who visited us said, "This pie is a Forget You Pie,"  (except she didn't say Forget You) "Because at first, you think 'This is really good apple pie,' then the pie is all, 'Bam!  FORGET YOU!'"  The pie did not say "Forget you," either.  She's still right.  Do you have to add cayenne to make a tasty pie?  Of course not.  But even our guest, who is more averse to spicy food than the Chief Taster, admitted that while she would not have considered adding it to an apple pie, she thought it was a great idea after tasting it, even if it was a little strong.

In this case, the cayenne is the crux move.  In climbing, the crux is that one move that can make an otherwise moderate route a difficult, beastly climb.  Or at least the hardest part of the route.  It's the part of the route that gets your attention; it is the part of the route that makes it worthwhile and exciting.  This is not your granny's apple pie.  Unless your granny is a hardcore climber and fan of spicy food.  In that case, go Granny!

This particular crux involved reaching around a lot of gooey bird poo.  The pie did not.

This pie, in its current formulation, needs some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (which I immediately whipped up, haha) to temper the spice.  I'm going to need at least one more trial before I'm happy with the recipe, but this blog is about more than just the final product: it's about all the mistakes, missteps, and trials along the way.  You get to learn as I do.  Enjoy!

For anybody who's wondering, the whole-wheat bacon cinnamon rolls also turned out very well.  I was worried that they wouldn't rise well enough, but they proved me happily wrong.

Our female guest also surprised me: she thought that the cinnamon rolls actually stole the spotlight from the bacon.  She's apparently a bigger meat fiend than me, or any of the guys who climb with me.  Kind of scary.

Phillyup

This is an adaptation of an old family recipe.  Not my old family, but somebody’s. Probably.  I don’t even know whom.  Dad found a recipe for Cream of Reuben Soup somewhere--I think it was in the paper--back when the two of us were doing lots of culinary experimentation together.  It was so good that when we finished the first batch and were trying to decide what to do with the rest of the corned beef, we just made another batch. We did not regret that decision.

Years later, while living in Oregon and thinking about soup through the cold autumn nights, I decided to try a variation and concocted Cream of Philly Cheesesteak Soup by using Reuben Soup as a guideline and adjusting ingredients according to the differences in the sandwiches.  At the time, I was also toying around with bread recipes, so I made some bread bowls which I lined with provolone cheese.  I still think the concept was sound, but my execution was a little off: the capacity of my bread bowls was so small that I had to fill them three times before I felt like I’d had enough soup, and bread bowls--being made of bread, not bowl--do not take well to repeated refillings.

But the soup was very good.

I probably should have written down the recipe somewhere.

This year, since I had finally made Dad’s Reuben Soup on my own, I thought it was time to try to reconstruct Philly Cheesesteak Soup.  This trial might have been better than the first batch, if only for the inclusion of mushrooms.  I don’t know how I overlooked that before.  The ingredients and method I used this time are below; details and some food porn follow.

This meal is dedicated to the Italian community of Philadelphia, whether they want it or not.

Ryan's Cream of Philly Cheesesteak Soup
6 C chicken broth (I probably would have preferred beef; vegetable would also work)
1 pound beef top round or sirloin
8 oz sliced mushrooms (see notes, below)
1 C chopped green bell pepper
1/2 C chopped red pepper
1/2 C chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 t thyme
1-2 bay leaves
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t tarragon
1/4 t liquid smoke (optional)
2-3 shakes hot sauce
3 T corn starch
1/3 C water
1 C heavy (whipping) cream

1. Cut meat into pieces small enough to share a soup spoon with some veggies. Brown over medium heat in a heavy skillet, then dump the meat into a large soup pot. Beef juices can be added to soup pot or drained away. Your call.
2. Put peppers and onions in skillet and cook over med-high to high heat, stirring occasionally. They should get slightly seared, but the goal is not to fully cook the vegetables, just discolor them a little. Think of how the peppers and onions look in a Philly Cheesesteak; that's the goal. Add the mushrooms when the veggies are basically done.  You just need them to soften a little and soak up some of the oil and leftover beef juices, then you can dump all of that into the soup pot.
3. Add broth, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, pepper, tarragon, liquid smoke, and hot sauce to pot. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.
4. Remove bay leaves. Mix cornstarch with 1/3 C water and stir smooth, then add to soup. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in cream. Serve with provolone cheese and toasted bread crumbs or cheese-lined bread bowls.

I like to have things ready when I start, but you can often take advantage of timing to help with that. For example, if shredded cheese is the last thing that goes into a soup that simmers for half an hour, that gives you plenty of time to shred the cheese if you were unable, as I often am, to find the cheese you want pre-shredded in the store. When it came to making this soup, I used a similar organizational tactic: cut all the veggies first and set them aside, then cut the meat. That way, the meat doesn't have a chance to contaminate the veggies. Veggies can't contaminate meat.

After I cooked the meat, I dropped it into the soup pot and threw the veggies in the skillet.  Peppers and onions first.  Keep the heat medium-high; the goal is to sear the edges a little, giving them some color, but leaving them to get really cooked in the soup pot.  It’s ok to add a little oil (I used olive; vegetable or canola is fine, too) to make sure they don’t stick, and if you’re using cast iron, it’s good for the pan, too.

Last time, I used top round; I only know this because I remember I checked the Wikipedia article on cheesesteaks to find out what meat was traditionally used, and I generally can’t afford ribeye.  This time, the Chief Taster elected to get the beef from her favorite meat vendor at the local farmers’ market, and the very nice lady who worked there gave me a blank look when I told her what I wanted.  Then I explained why I wanted it, and she offered me a soup bone or some stew meat, but when I told her I wanted to use what would be in the sandwich version, she offered me something they had labeled “sandwich meat,” which turned out to be very thinly sliced raw beef.  That will work.  The real point here is: get some good-quality beef without going crazy.  It’s just going into soup, but you want it to be a little tender, and to cut it into small enough pieces that you can easily eat it with a spoon already full of veggies and broth.  I should have cut what I had a little more before tossing it in the skillet, but it worked out ok, though I think I overcooked the meat a little.  The Chief Taster was still happy with it, but when somebody else makes you dinner, one usually doesn’t complain.

Is this the definitive recipe for Philly Cheesesteak Soup? Sure. For now. But I hardly ever make things exactly the same way twice, because I keep trying to improve upon them, or try a different angle. It is entirely likely that in the future, I'll hit upon a new variation, and post that here, too. But until then, this is right. Modify to your stomach's content. That's what cooking's all about.

Sausage Mushroom Quiche

The Chief Taster requested quiche, ostensibly because I had accidentally bought two dozen eggs in one day (we went to a lot of different markets that day, and they never got marked off the list.  I accept only partial blame) and she thought we should do something that used a lot of them.  Quiche uses four eggs.  Pound cake uses five.  Had she known this, I would have written a vastly different entry today.

We also had some mushrooms left from the braised short ribs she made yesterday (I was still dishing mine out in the kitchen when I heard her yell “oh my god, this is amazing!!”  She was not wrong.) and some sweet Italian sausage left over from general purpose usage in the freezer.

We’ll get to the quiche itself in a moment; first, let’s address the crust.

Mom’s sister and my dad each independently gave me the same recipe for pie crust.  I love them both, and have always been impressed with their culinary capabilities (Dad’s chicken pot pie is killer; the aunt is known for her pies), but I’ve never been thrilled with the results I get from that recipe.  Instead, I usually use the recipe from the Betty Crocker Culinary Compendium, which is identical to the family formula except that it calls for solid vegetable shortening (Crisco) instead of vegetable oil.  I think it gives a better texture to the finished pie crust, and I’ve found it easier to handle.  The advantage to the family formula is that you don’t need a pastry blender.

I ran into trouble when I found out halfway into the crust recipe (without enough time for another grocery run today) that I didn’t have enough shortening.  I needed ⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon; I had ⅓ cup plus maybe a teaspoon.  I went with it.

Even after adding the 3 T water called for in the recipe, the dough still hadn’t pulled together as well as I had wanted, so I added about a tablespoon of oil.  That helped the doughball I had to gain enough cohesion to pull in the crumbs left in the bowl.  I let it wait in the fridge while I prepared the filling, and it rolled out beautifully when the time came.

The quiche recipe I had calls for bacon (quiche lorraine) and onion.  It includes a variation to make seafood quiche; this suggests replacing the bacon with 1 C seafood of your choice, and substituting green onion for onion in an equal amount.  That’s a little weird, because the original recipe only calls for ½ C bacon.  Go figure.  I sliced up the mushrooms, threw two big Italian sausages in the skillet (expecting them to be far too much), hacked them into little pieces with the spatula as they cooked, and added the mushrooms as the sausage finished cooking.  They only need to be in there long enough to soak up some juices and cook until softened, which isn’t long for mushrooms.

As the crust was baking, I scooped all of the mushrooms and most of the sausage into a glass measuring cup.  When I hit 1 C, I threw in some onion (left from other recipes) to get 1 ⅓ C total.  This left a little sausage for me to snack upon, but not quite enough to bother setting aside for another recipe.

After the crust had started to brown, I shook in the sausage, onion, and Swiss cheese in alternating scoops to get a good mix inside the pie.  The first time I made a quiche I put all of the cheese in first, and thus learned that it does not float to the top while baking.  Not that you’d necessarily notice, but in my mind it makes more sense to do it this way.

The final tweak came in the egg mixture.  The recipe called for paprika.  I am certain we have paprika.  I have no idea where it went.  When I unpacked all the kitchen stuff in this apartment, I alphabetized the spice rack stuff.  There is one exception to this rule: rather than put Cinnamon three bottles back in its row, where it belongs, I keep it out front because I use it far more often than Chili Powder and Cilantro.  Paprika is one of those rare exceptions: because it’s in a tiny little jar, it lives on a smaller shelf above the rest.  But it’s still on the right-hand side, where it belongs alphabetically.  It wasn’t tonight.  Maybe I’m out and didn’t know; maybe it got mysteriously rearranged while the Chief Taster was pinch-hitting yesterday.  There’s really no telling.  Here’s how I get around a lack of paprika: use cayenne pepper, but not as much.  Since the rest of this dish is a lot of cheese and cream, their milder flavors can provide balance, and it will probably be ok.

I noticed something strange in the final product. Take a close look at where the crust is, compared to where the pie dish is. There's a considerable gap, and I don't know how it happened. It might have been the tweak in the pastry recipe; it might have been the cooling quiche contracting. I really don't know. I'm going to try the same crust recipe on a pie and see what happens.