It's a Dirty Job, but...

One of the perks of having a cafe is that before offering anything for sale, it must be taste-tested and streamlined for preparation. I learned the hard way to never shoot from the hip when introducing new food onto the menu without first making sure our equipment available can handle the techniques required or that it can be replicated easily for a crowd.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself today, having prepared a dozen Cheesecake-filled Chocolate Dipped Strawberries. They won't last until Valentine's Day, so someone is going to have to make sure they don't go to waste.

In any case, we needed photos for a newspaper ad.

I didn't expect these to taste as good as they did (my opinion that cheesecake should remain pristine and encumbered by fruits and sauces and weird flavors has prevented me from tasting this prior to this). But I figured -- yeah, they're festive and all; placed in some pretty Valentine packaging -- a nice, affordable gift.

Really, how can you go wrong: Chocolate. Cheesecake. Fresh strawberries. Holy Cupid, Batman!

We'll have these at the cafe for Valentine's Day, but if you want to make sure we've got enough on hand for your Sweetie, call us at the cafe, 304 822-7171, through February 23.

Developing a New Recipe

Most of the menu items at the cafe are dishes I that have been passed down from my family. I never saw my grandmother consult a cookbook and my mother's most memorable dishes were not ones found in her dilapidated World War II-era Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

My biggest challenge when first opening the cafe was getting the soup and stew recipes down on paper so any of the cooking staff*1 could prepare them with consistent results (not to mention streamlining the process to allow for larger portion and quicker preparation).



Time marches on, though, and we don't only feature food stuck in the mid-20th century. Food trends change, supply availability changes and I'm very far away from the culture in which I grew and cooked as a young woman. This is driven home to me each time I put out a dish of roasted peppers with anchovies in front of anyone born south of the Mason Dixon line; you'd think I was offering chocolate-covered cow pats (when everyone knows southerners deep fry their cow pats)*2.

While we don't offer the exotic at the cafe, I do try to keep the menu fresh and like to add new items as specials. I wish it were as simple as finding a new recipe on the internet or watching Food Network. I would be disingenuous to merely replicate a recipe someone else already perfected. That's not to say I don't use someone else's recipe as a springboard.

This is mostly because cooking for a restaurant is vastly different from cooking for your family. I'd love to treat my customer to my grandmother's stuffed breast of veal -- but it's hardly practical under our current circumstances. So I begin by modifying recipes to allow for our equipment, our kitchen space and our time requirements.

Then, I'm afraid, the recipe is at the mercy of my own taste. I like to think I've got a pretty universal palette...but then I can't even smell kale cooking and I hear there are people who actually ingest that stuff...

Anyway, this weekend I worked on two recipes, one for sale at the cafe and one for catering. The first was Potato Chip Cookies and the other Miniature Quiche Lorraines.

The Potato Chip Cookies come out of our discomfort with throwing out the crumbs at the bottom of our  bulk chip  bag. As cafe frequenters know, just about all our dishes are accompanied by Route 11 Chips, the only chip on the planet I eat like...well...potato chips. I, actually, can eat "just one Lays."

The Miniature Quiches are a catering staple, but I've yet to find a catering version that had a thin, tasty crust and a light custard. Perhaps this is a sort of throw-away recipe in the catering trade -- one of those menu items that you throw out there because they are expected; they don't need to be exceptional, just there. At any rate, I'm just arrogant enough to think I can make the ultimate Miniature Quiche Lorraine

I must say, I was able to finalize my recipe for the Potato Chip Cookies. I'd attempted this once before and the results were...meh. I'm not going for "meh." I'm going for what I call Happy Mouth -- that's where you start chewing and the flavor on your tongue makes you focus totally on the wonderfulness happening in your mouth.

I'd decided my springboard would be my aunt's shortbread cookie recipe -- simple and buttery with enough sweetness to play against the chips. I'd researched other Potato Chips Cookie recipes -- many called for nuts, which I felt would complicate the flavor I was going for, and a lot just had too much sugar. At any rate, I felt comfortable with my original choice, only this time I added even more chips.

Then I had to decide how to bake them. My aunt's method of rolling out and cutting was too time consuming and it meant the re-rolled parts are either wasted or tougher than the other cookies (my mother would never "re-roll" cookie dough -- she said it made the cookies tough; and she was right. Wasteful, but right. I just give the rerolled cookies to my husband...). I had resolved this problem with a shortbread press that is totally impractical for a commercial operation.

So I started with drop cookies that I then pressed flat (shortbread doesn't spread and flatten like other cookie doughs). That solved the problem, but made an irregular shaped cooking that would be hard to package and keep fresh. And, still, not enough chips.

So the dough was rolled into balls and then flattened, which worked fine. I thought, "Well, I guess that's it."

Not exactly the wow effect I was going for but, then, I'd been sampling tiny quiches all morning... Frankly, I won't spend my money on resignation and I don't expect my customers to either.

And then...Inspiration!...(admittedly fueled by the dredges of a bottle of Shiraz I'd opened the night before to go with the Cacciatore I made for dinner). I'd sprinkle the final flattened cookie with even more potato chips!

Oh.

My.

Happy Mouth!

The three stages of the Potato Chip Cookie recipe

I wish I could report as much success with the tiny quiches. I already knew how to bake up what is typically -- put enough bacon in anything and people will be happy with it, myself included. But I don't consider the pastry just a vehicle for the filling. I make a rather tasty pie-crust (if I do say so myself) and that improved the flavor considerably. But getting the resulting product to look good using so delicate a pastry was time-consuming and impractical for a large quantity (which I consider to be anything over 100).

I also had to get over trying to exactly replicate a full-sized Quiche Lorraine, with it's thick layer of custard and underpinning of bacon and Swiss cheese. So I increased the bacon and cheese.

Happy Mouth! Frustrated caterer...Until I get this figured out, if you want to serve Miniature Quiche Lorraine to your 250 wedding guests, expect a run-of-the-mill product. Or have a smaller wedding. (I'm such a slave to food, that would be my choice; but, then, I've got boys).



Tonight we will enjoy the perfected Potato Chip Cookies and tomorrow I will order the glassine bags to sell them in. And next weekend we will be eating even more miniature quiches -- and every weekend thereafter until I'm satisfied.

It's a tough job...

*1 Basically, the Divine Mrs. D. She understands my need to say I have "staff." Mrs. D. is staff; also friend; and my helper brain -- if I'm asked a question to which I respond, "I don't know," Mrs. D usually does.

*2 Oh, lighten up. Do you know how many "Yankee" jokes I've had to endure over the past 30 years, not to mention arrogant bumper stickers ("We don't care how you did it back in New York")?

Some Images from October's Open Mic Night

You were expecting great political insight?

http://www.wusa9.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1863004380001

As Linda Elerbee always says: "And so it goes."

We'll try not to let celebrity go to our heads*

WUSA TV's Bruce Leshan, Chamber of Commerce Executive Officer Melanie Milliken and the WUSA TV cameraman who was strangely interested in sandwich-making technique. Oh...and Wyckedly Good Cupcakes!

I'm told we can expect more days like this. When your business is in a town called "Romney" in an elections year with a candidate of the same name, the media is bound to sooner or later take notice.

It started quietly enough -- a reporter from a Pittsburgh paper spent a few days here at the cafe, interviewing various citizens and soaking in the atmosphere. This resulted in this literary quote: "...at the Courthouse Corner Cafe." What poetry!

So yesterday it was WUSA TV out of Washington, D.C., who sent reporter Bruce Leshan and a cameraman (sorry, cameraman...no one got your name...) to cover...um...the opinions of ... people who live in a town with the same name as a presidential candidate...I guess...

Okay, yeah. One of those pseudo-political fluff pieces. They visited both Democrats' and Republicans' campaign headquarters. They asked our opinion on the election but we, of course have no opinion. I'll pour coffee for socialists, tea partiers, Pilgrims or Hugenots. I'll make a panini for Libertarians, Albanians or Moonies. I'll make paninis for Libertarian Albanian Moonies.

So, if you happen to live in the Washington, D.C., area and you happen to be tuned to WUSA Channel 9 between 5 and 7:30 p.m., you may (or may not...) see me making a panini to any Libertarian Abanian Moony who might want one.**

*or to employ that tired Andy Warhol quote about 15 seconds of fame.

**I'm told you can see the piece on their website after 7:30 p.m.

Just another Sunday afternoon...until...

So here's the scenario: It's 4 p.m. on a Sunday and I'm exhausted.

Happily, Sundays are the closest thing we get to a day off because we close at 3 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m. Unhappily, after closing we not only have to pick up a few things for the week to come, but I have to perfect a recipe that will be a special this week.

Before you can appreciate my point here, though, I must impress upon you, dear reader, the level of my exhaustion. I describe this not to exact pity, but to drive home the fact that all I really wanted to do with my 3-1/2 hours off was put my feet up (yes, it's always about my feet), turn on a black and white movie and doze on and off while Jimmy Stewart assured me that I had a choice between being "oh so smart and oh so pleasant."

But first there was a matter of chicken and dumplings.

It's not that I've never made chicken and dumplings; it's that I've never made chicken and dumplings for the cafe. But my old standby of dumplings were not going to work for the cafe. Besides, a long time ago I promised one of my sons that I'd master the type of dumpling sold at Cracker Barrel, a less delicate incarnation of its biscuit-like cousin.

So there I am, rolling out dough and feeling rather sorry for myself because I was quite sure the rest of the world, having enjoyed a hearty Sunday dinner, was curled up on the couch napping while I'm relegated to cooking yet another chicken dish that I wasn't even particularly excited about eating.

Dumplings done, chicken roasted and now I bring chicken broth to a boil. And, because I don't work at Cracker Barrel, I decided to give my broth some flavor. Salt and pepper, of course -- ho, hum...but when that rosemary hit the hot broth...holy cow! Suddenly there was nothing -- nothing -- I wanted more than that bowl of chicken and dumplings -- not my much-anticipated lie-down, not a day off, not even a martini.

My entire afternoon was transformed by the simple marrying of rosemary and chicken broth. I know, I know -- most people would say that is totally indicative of how pathetic my life is. I totally disagree; it's yet another example of the transforming abilities of cooking from scratch. Heating up a Lean Cuisine Rosemary Chicken would not have had the same effect. Nor would it have afforded me the pleasure of that magic moment when thin broth morphs into a velvety, fragrant gravy with the addition of a simple beurre manie'. Soon the kitchen filled with dogs and cats and, ultimately, a husband, all following their noses to the source of the heady vapor. (You know that famous C.S. Lewis quote about "we read to know we are not alone?" I cook for the same reason.)

But I go on...

It's just chicken and dumplings, right?

Oh, the agony!

If our customers only knew the distress and panic the kitchen manager (okay...me) goes through for their sake...

If you've been paying attention to our ads and postings on Facebook, you've probably noticed that not only are we open later in the evenings Monday through Saturday, but that we are also offering dinner specials.

You see, I've been cooking dinner for 47 years now. For 46 of those years, the recipients of my food were under an obligation to enjoy what I put in front of them. As an 8-year-old I probably conjured up some pretty bizarre dishes, but my family was either too hungry or too polite to turn anything down. As a wife and mother I did focus on improving my skills but, frankly, whether or not I succeeded, my husband and sons knew the wisdom of not biting the hand that fed them. There were no complaints and even occasional compliments, usually triggered by the need for cash or the car keys.

Now, though, I am asking people to go out of their way, come to this cafe, and put down their hard-earned money to eat something I cooked. And not just soups and sandwiches for lunch; this is dinner, the big kahuna of the meal trifecta.

It's a wonder I sleep at night.

Not to say, I wasn't worried when we first opened and people started ordering soups that I had made. Everyone has very specific ideas about how those old standbys -- chicken noodle, tomato, minestrone, etc. -- should taste and for awhile my anxiety level spiked until the customer checked out without complaining. (That's right -- it doesn't take much validation for me to be happy. Just knowing my food wasn't gaggingly horrible is enough.)

Dinner, though. Dinner. People look forward to dinner. A good dinner is bliss. A bad dinner can screw up an otherwise okay day. You think that kind of responsibility is easy?

So this has been a challenging week for me and everyone who knows me (you don't think I'm going to keep my suffering to myself, do you?). We're featuring quite a few new dishes this week and next, but also a few old favorites. You really should stop in and everyone else in the cafe will be happy and carefree.

I'll only look like I'm in agony until you leave...