syrupy salmon

Friends got us a cast-iron cookbook for Pi Day (what, you're not observant of math holidays?), and I sometimes browse through it for food ideas guaranteed to be excellent. This time, I was trying to find the Spanish Chicken Stew recipe I knew I'd made, but my efforts were in vain (turns out it was in my notebook, because I'd made up the recipe. I'll get to it soon, really). On my way from cover to cover, I made the mistake of showing the Chief Taster a salmon recipe with a full-page picture.

"Make that. Now."
"Now?"
"Tonight. Do we have a dinner plan for tonight? Can we make that instead?"

I had to buy a couple things I've never bought, but they were conveniently near each other in the "Asian" section of the grocery (four feet of shelves at the end of an otherwise unrelated aisle). And I didn't get the sauce thickened to the "glaze" consistency recommended, but she was still pretty happy with the results. More on the subject of making women happy follows the recipe.

Salmon with balsamic Thai chile glaze
4 scallions (white parts)
4 inches of the green parts of aforementioned scallions (I can never find scallions. Sources I've found say they're the same thing, so I always use green onion when a recipe says "scallion." No one has died, so I guess I was right. I did not see the "four inch" part of the recipe until typing this post, the day after making the food, so we had lots of green onion. I used the rest in breakfast the next day. No worries.)
salt and pepper
4 to 6 (6 oz) salmon fillets with skin attached (I bought a 12 oz slab of salmon and cut it in half. I didn't adjust sauce quantities. That's part of why I had so much sauce, but not why it didn't thicken)
2 T vegetable oil (or canola)
1 T Asian sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 T grated fresh ginger root
1/2 C sweet Thai chile sauce
1/4 C firmly packed brown sugar
3 T soy sauce
3 T balsamic vinegar
1 to 2 T freshly squeezed lime juice (I cut a golf-ball-sized lime in half and squeezed the hell out of it in my hands. That gave me 2 T)

• Chop the scallion whites and set them aside. Thinly slice the green portions and set them aside. They'll be garnish later. The whites will go into the skillet with the sesame oil, garlic, and ginger, so you can put all of that in the same bowl if you want, but use a spatula to clear it so you get all the oil.
• Season the salmon with salt and pepper. I put on a lot, because that's how I cook steaks, too, but under the sauce I don't think I could taste it. Still, it's good to use when searing, so don't skip that.
• Heat a 12" skillet on high heat. Coat with the veg oil. Put in the salmon, skin side up, and leave it the hell alone for about four minutes. Don't flip them, don't move them around, don't peel them up and look at the fleshy side. Pretend they're your ex at a party and just turn your back on the damn things, ok? Maybe take a look every once in a while to see how they're cooking (you'll see a color change creep up the edges of the fillets). I used this time to frantically finish the sauce ingredients I'd forgotten, like the grated ginger and minced garlic.
• Flip the fish and let it cook skin side down for another 2-3 minutes, then move it onto a warm plate. (I neglected to warm the plate for two reasons. First: I was using the oven to roast some potatoes at 400F. Second, I was a little gun-shy after destroying one of our new pie dishes with a rapid temperature change. Luckily, the sauce cooks up quick, and the fish only cooled enough to be edible.) The book says to wipe out the skillet with a paper towel, but there was nothing in my skillet once the fish was freed, so I skipped that.
• Put the skillet on medium-high heat. Dump in all the stuff that goes with the onion whites. Cook and stir 30 seconds, until fragrant. I have almost no sense of smell, and that sesame oil was still plenty fragrant. Those of you whose noses are more than decorative will have no trouble telling when it's ready to:
• Add chile sauce, brown sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar. Stir and cook 2 to 3 minutes, or until syrupy. Turn off the burner, stir in the lime juice.
• Top each serving of the salmon with a generous dose of the glaze. Mine were practically swimming again, but I had all those roasted potatoes, too, and despite my careful application of seasoning (which amounted to pulling four or five jars out of the spice rack, thinking, "yeah, that sounds like a good idea," and then liberally shaking them over the taters), the sauce soaked in and overpowered everything I had done. We didn't care. It's good sauce. I had some left over, and I'm not sure what to do with it, but I'll find out this week. Top with green onions.

A while ago, I mentioned an idea I had for a cookbook called "How To Please A Woman." It's been a recurring theme of jokes and discussions ever since. One friend in particular has been campaigning hard for this idea. She may be more excited for it than I am. I have two hypotheses as to why. First, her outlook on publishing has not taken the pummeling that mine has. Second, I suspect she hopes to be a taste tester for the featured recipes. Can't blame her optimism.

I had been drifting away from the idea for a couple months now, because I've been disappointed with repeated failed efforts to get my work printed, and because, as I told the Chief Taster and our glass-blowing friend, "Every asshole with a food blog has a cookbook. But every other asshole with a food blog also has a big following. I can count my followers without removing my shoes."

Thing is, I'm pretty much the only person who understands what the title of this blog means. Starting a new site with a title like "How To Please A Woman" makes it much more appealing and accessible. The glass blower believes this will go a long way to attracting more followers. This is where you come in. You had to find this post somehow. However you got here, leave me a comment below (or you can contact me directly) and let me know whether you have interest in a new site with pretty much the same content (it's also been suggested that I could have polls connected to each recipe. I like that idea, too). Still me writing recipes to try, but with a specific goal in mind: scoring chicks!

talk nerdy to me

Did you know this Saturday is the Pi Day of the century?  I've marked Pi Day for years, and it cracks me up that Dad is guaranteed to call me on two days each year: my birthday, and March 14, just to wish me a happy pi day.

This year, it's not just 3.14, but 3.14.15, and at 9:26:53 (in the morning, for those of you on a 24-hour clock), Pi Day will carry nine decimal places.  How great is that?!  I suggest you make something round to mark the occasion.  Pie, pizza, perfectly formed cookies, it's up to you.  I've made other plans, but here's a couple pictures to inspire you.

Pecan Pi!

Same dish, less Pi

Bluebird Pi! Pizza with barbecue sauce, Bleu cheese, grilled chicken, caramelized onion, and green bell pepper.

Chicken Pot Pi!

Key Lime Pi!

Fun fact: during my first year in college, when I was adjusting to terrible dorm food and really missed Mom's cooking, I sent a postcard home wherein I had filled the message space, in very small printing, with a very long list of foods that I missed.  Every second item in the list was a different kind of pie.

I still miss your cooking, Mom, and I miss you, too.

future foods

While listening to the Chief Taster moon over a batch of cookies, I told her, "I have an idea for a book.  It's called 'How to Please a Woman.'  It is a cookbook."

She said she thought it was the most commercially lucrative idea I've ever had.

Shortly after I finished my Big Hike, a friend suggested that I write a Thru-Hiker's Cookbook.  It wouldn't be the food I ate on the trail, but the food I dreamed about on the trail.  All the things I wanted to eat and cook, but couldn't.

Since then, I've had several ideas for both books, and I'm toying with the idea of actually putting something together, if only to entertain myself for a couple afternoons.  Despite the Chief Taster's assertions, I'm certain that my lingering fantasies of being published will only ever be fantasies.

Still, it's a fun idea.

Pumpkin Pretzels

During my difficulties last fall with measuring pumpkins, I ended up with 2/3 C puree leftover and thawed, and in urgent need of use.  The last time something like that happened, I made some experimental pumpkin bagels, which were ok, but not extraordinary.  I was going to do that again, mainly because I wanted bagels, when I decided to make pretzels instead.

How those monks thought this looked like children's hands praying, I'll never know.  I suspect some of that famous German beer was involved.

I'd made pretzels before.  Mine puff up an awful lot, so you really get pretzel-shaped sandwich buns, but... how is that a problem?

But there was still a problem.

I've made it clear that I'm not a pro, and I'm not an expert.  That's the whole point.  My aim is not to impress people with what I can do, but impress upon them what they can do.  That's why I'm willing to share some failures here, as well.

Not that these pretzels were a failure, mind you--they were damn tasty pretzels.  You just couldn't tell they had any pumpkin in them, and if you can't tell it happened, then why do it?

Since this formula is not worth replicating, I'm not posting how I did it here, but I'll still show you the pictures, and I promise that sometime--maybe before this post goes live during my hike--I'll make pretzels again, and post that recipe instead.

Pass the mustard and get out of my way.

Half cup empty

This is what my 1/2 cup looked like two years ago.

The handle snapped off when I was washing it, which I suppose is better than when it might have spilled something messy all over my counter, but still a serious pain for me.  Luckily, at that time I was working in Oregon, and one of my main responsibilities was working closely with several local shops to get parts made for our little R&D group.  One of my usual contacts was a guy who ran a small machining operation out of his home.  We'll call him Bob, because Bob seems like a good name for a guy who runs a machining operation out of his home, and it makes the narration of this story easier if we give him a name.  In case it is not clear, "Bob" was not really Bob's name.

Bob had a Ford Thunderbird in his garage, and if I knew more about cars, I could tell you what year, but I'm not that kind of expert.  I do know that he was working on restoring that car the entire time I knew him, and a few months before I left Oregon, he finished the job.  Like I said, I don't know much about cars, but I can tell you that T-bird was beautiful, and purred like a kitten who could kick your ass.  The inside of his garage was papered with pages cut from old calendars of the sort car guys are likely to have: hot cars, often draped with bikini babes, sometimes with exotic backgrounds.

He told me once that he only took off work for two days: his birthday, and Veteran's Day (he had served, though I don't know when, or where, or in which branch), but I knew it wasn't true when he said it, because his shop closed each year for elk season, and occasionally when he went fishing in the mountains.  He would return from these trips with pictures to share of brook trout he had caught and released, or stories of the mountain lion they had heard near their camp.

When my measuring cup broke, I knew Bob could fix it--or that he would know who could.  As it turned out, he had a friend with a different type of welder repair the handle, but he never charged me for it.  This was about the time he found out I was leaving town, and he said it was a going-away present.

A year ago this week, Bob killed himself.

I don't know the manner, only that it was on the eve of his fiftieth birthday.  I found out a week later, and awkwardly searched the store for a condolence card for his wife.  We had met a couple times, and talked often on the phone when I called for Bob and he wasn't available.  One time, while giving my dad and his friend a tour of the Oregon coast, we happened upon Bob, his wife, and their grandson among the tidal pools at Haystack Rock.  They had driven there in his Thunderbird.

Bob was the one who told me about a unique butte, unmarked and devoid of trails in the National Forest land south of town.  From outside the butte, it looked like it summited in a barren expanse of lava rock, but when you climbed to the top, you found that the caldera was deep, and full of Ponderosa pines, but until you got to the top, you still couldn't see the towering trees in their secret grove.  I took Dad there once--we had to try twice that week to find it, but we did, and it was worth the effort.

I considered him a friend.  I'd tell him about my bike rides, and learning to ski.  He'd show me his invention to hold a fishing line in the ground at adjustable angles, or tell me about interesting projects he had for other clients.  Every time I spoke to him, he was upbeat and smiling.  I couldn't figure out why he had done it.  Neither could any of my former co-workers.

Some time after I moved to Virginia, the handle broke off my 1 Cup measure.  I put the handle in a drawer and kept using the cup, trying to keep my fingers clean and dry when they go into the flour, or sugar, or cornmeal.  I keep thinking that I should either replace it or repair it, but I no longer know a machinist.

Every time I use it, I think of Bob.  Every time, I wonder why he killed himself.  Every time, I feel bad for his wife.

Then I wash the cup, and put it back in the cabinet, and try to think about my next chore.  I try not to think about how much harder it must be for her.  I still wonder why he did it.

I know this post is not uplifting, and it's not even about food, but it is a story about the things I use to make my food, and what I think about when I cook.  There are items in every life that carry stories with them.  Some day, I may end up replacing that measuring cup, but until then, I keep thinking of Bob, and even though it hurts a little, I feel like that's reason enough to keep using the cup with the broken handle.

June 23

Happy Birthday, Mom.  I miss you, I love you, and some day--some beautiful, glorious day--I hope to be half the cook that you were.

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!