Slightly Off The Mark At Black River Cafe

Recently, I had the good fortune to attend the dedication of a new building space in Oberlin, Ohio with friend and Oberlin College alumnus Edsel. The project had been completed by a trio of Oberlin alumnae, one of whom was a mutual Facebook friend to Edsel and I. Since it has been literally twenty years since I stepped foot onto the Oberlin campus, I asked Edsel to recommend a place to eat after the ceremony was completed. While many college campus type options were available, only a couple of upscale options existed. The one Edsel suggested was Black River Cafe.

I had actually heard of Black River Cafe before and excited to finally get a chance to try this eatery, I quickly agreed. After the ceremony had come to an end, we made our way to 15 South Main Street, Oberlin, OH 44074. They can also be reached at 440-775-3663. At the time of this writing, Black River Cafe does not have their own website; however, they do have a Facebook fan page. While there was no specific parking lot available for the restaurant, metered parking was available on the street. Fortunately, since it was a Saturday night when we went, the parking was free.

The restaurant was located in a long line of storefront properties just off the main intersection by the college. Here was a shot of the front of the restaurant:


Sitting on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant was a chalkboard sign announcing some of the items on the menu for tonight's visit:


While I don't recommend showing up on a Saturday night without a reservation at 7:00 PM, fortunately because it was just Edsel and I, they were able to seat us within a very short ten minutes. While the menu was only one page (which I greatly liked), because it was fairly large, I took two photographs in order to capture the entire thing:



As you can see, gentle reader, the menu was broken up into small plates, salads, large plates, and sides; several dishes making an appearance in each category. It was clear that the goal of the restaurant and chef was cooking seasonally as many of the ingredients reflected this time of year. While we pondered what to order tonight, our server started us out with bread and olive oil.

Here was a shot of the bread:


And the plate of extra virgin olive oil she poured for us:


The bread was actually quite tasty, having a crumb with just a slight amount of resistance and a crust that was chewy without being crusty. The olive oil made a nice foil for the bread, adding in just a bit of pepperiness to each bite.

Looking over the menu, Edsel and I decided to split two of the small plates and then each order our own entrée. First up was the Cornmeal Crusted Fried Calamari with Sweet and Hot Peppers:


The peppers had been pickled and added a wonderful acidity that helped to cut through the fried calamari, which itself was done very well. Those who have tried to cook calamari before know that you either cook it a very short time or a very long time. Any place in the middle and you end up with chewy rubber bands. While not the ultimate in tenderness, Black River Cafe's version was still pretty darn tender. The peppers added just a touch of heat, enough to make the dish interesting without being overpowering.

The other small plate that we ordered was the Soft Polenta with Sautéed Mushrooms, Porcini Cream Sauce, Parmesan and topped with a hint of Truffle Oil:


As soon as this plate was set in front of us, the gorgeous earthy smell from the truffle oil made me salivate even more. The polenta (cooked cornmeal) was indeed soft and creamy, but by itself, lacked salt. The sautéed mushrooms, however, made up for this deficiency by being properly seasoned. When eaten together, the corn flavor from the polenta was even more pronounced. Of the two starters, Edsel and I both agreed that the fried calamari dish was definitely better.

For my entree, I settled on the Half-Roasted Chicken with Acorn Squash Puree, Maple Jus and Fresh Green Beans:


Here was a shot of my plate from the opposite side:


The maple jus was drizzled around the plate. By itself, it was far too salty, even though the sweetness from the maple syrup did help to cut it slightly. When I combined it with the acorn squash puree, however, it's assertiveness was mitigated slightly and worked much better. The fresh green beans were cooked nicely and had both a tender and crunchy aspect to them. When I finally got around to the chicken, I noticed that the skin wasn't uniformly crispy, which would've added another textural element to the dish.

I started with the dark meat, the thigh and leg. While the dark meat wasn't overcooked, I could tell that it was a tad bit drier than it should have been. Edsel immediately made the comment that if the dark meat had been cooked this far, there was surprisingly little hope for moist breast meat. As someone who knows never to contradict an experienced foodie, it came as no shock that Edsel was right on the money. Here was a shot of the interior of the breast meat:


While I did enjoy the flavor of the chicken and the chicken skin, it had definitely been overcooked and that detracted from my overall enjoyment of the dish. Even with the aggressive maple jus and the overcooked meat and undercooked skin, I did actually enjoy eating the dish as a whole and would hope that were I to order it again that it would come out of the kitchen prepared perfectly the next time.

Edsel and I did ponder getting dessert for just a second, but both of us were too full to consider it longer than that. With tip and tax, my meal tonight at the Black River Cafe came to $30, which given the quality of the food was a good value. There were a few small errors along the way, but no real show stoppers. Knowing that a trip to Oberlin is an hour drive each way, I don't know that I personally would be seeking out regular trips to the restaurant, but if I happened to already be at the college, I can certainly see myself returning for another meal.

Losing That Lovin' Feeling For Williams-Sonoma

I was recently wandering around Summit Mall and found myself outside one of my favorite old haunts, Williams-Sonoma. I fondly remember spending hours and hours of my time looking through every nook of the store and spending even more time pouring over the catalogs, envisioning a kitchen that had all of the wonderful cookware, gadgets, and electronics that this high-end boutique store could offer. I became even more excited when a good friend of mine got a job as a salesperson. Not only could I have my cake, but I got a discount on it, too. I made up my wishlist and like the good Santa Claus she was, she filled my culinary stocking with lots of goodies. I'd like to think it was because I was an especially good boy that year, but the reality was I simply paid her to do it.

From the first moment I walked into Williams-Sonoma, I've known that these high-end products don't come cheap. And I'm okay with that. If there was one thing I could come to expect from the products sold at this store chain, it was quality products. If I ever had any problems with an item, I returned/exchanged them with no problems and no arguments from anyone. In fact, the only real problem I ever had was with a Kitchen Aid Pro 600 stand mixer, which I got on sale for $299 because they were phasing out the color schemes associated with spring. Apparently there was something wrong with the gear mechanism and as I started using the mixer for heavy duty bread kneading, small metal shavings began raining down into my dough. Definitely not a good thing. I packed it back up, took it back to the store from which I purchased it, and they replaced it. No muss. No fuss.

Over the years as I have become a more experienced cook, I found myself buying less and less when I stopped in for a visit. It wasn't that there wasn't some cool new gadget to obsess over, it was just that I had all the basics in my kitchen now: knives, pots, pans, essential tools. For a while I was even buying some of their jarred sauces, especially the spicy peanut Asian sauce that I used quite a bit with udon noodles. But even that stopped when I decided to teach myself how to make it from scratch. I had gone from Love to Mild Indifference over the course of a decade.

That all changed yesterday. As I walked through the front door of the store, I was curiously drawn over to the pots and pans section of the space. I spotted this:

Image ownership and copyright by Williams-Sonoma.

This, gentle reader, was the All-Clad Ultimate Chicken Roaster. It is essentially a roasting pan with a long curved neck that suspends the chicken above the pan. And what fabulous price was being charged for this ultimate chicken roaster pan? Well, the suggested retail was $250, but the good folks at Williams-Sonoma had decided to give the chicken roasting public a break and were only asking $179.99!

Something snapped inside my head. I felt like I had eaten the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden and I suddenly knew of my culinary nakedness.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem spending a nice chunk of change to buy a really nice roasting pan. I have made many a roasted chicken, pork loin roast, and roasted root vegetable medley to prove that. What drove me to sudden fits of insanity was that here was a well-respected company, All-Clad, offering a culinary uni-tasker for $180 (or worse yet, $250 if you went with the suggested price)? I began to realize that a younger, more inexperienced version of myself would've been all over it. It was exactly the kind of superfluous piece of hardware that I would have asked for as a Christmas or birthday gift.

I began to stumble around the store, looking for other bits of overpriced insanity. First up, I discovered the All-Clad Timer/Clock. A hefty little gadget, it was priced at $39.95. I can hear your question now, gentle reader and no, there wasn't a probe thermometer involved, it was just a TIMER. For $40. Seriously? Up next, a pair of kitchen tongs for $28.50. Don't people know that they can get kitchen tongs at any good restaurant supply store for much, much less? My favorite overpriced tool, however, had to be the vegetable and garlic choppers. Priced at $29.95 and $18.00 respectively, the thought that people either have so little time or so little skill with a knife that they need to spend nearly $50 on these two gadgets made me quite sad and mad at the same time.

Ultimately, Williams-Sonoma (and its other high-end boutique brethren) is a business and is looking to sell what it thinks its customers want. I guess it just wasn't until today that I realized that their business model had evolved to embrace the same "dumbing down" that has happened on Food Network since its inception in the mid 1990's. People either don't want to or don't have time to learn proper knife skills or how to roast a chicken regardless of whether you have the Ultimate Chicken Roaster or just a plain old aluminum foil pan you bought at the grocery store.

I guess what saddened me the most was that trips to Williams-Sonoma used to inspire me to be a better cook and learn new things, be it ingredients or techniques. I firmly believe that higher quality kitchen products do help you to turn out better and more consistent food. Unfortunately, the only thing I saw during my trip yesterday were gadgets that didn't help to further knife skills and overpriced uni-taskers that have no place in the home of a serious cook.

I could say that it's not you, Williams-Sonoma, it's me. But that wouldn't be true. It is you. I think the love affair may finally be over; it's time to break up and move on.

Kitchen Challenge: Roasted Chicken with Asparagus Barley Risotto

As I'm sure you, the gentle reader, have noticed by now, I tend to eat out at restaurants quite a lot. Lately I just haven't had much of a chance to cook dinner at home. So, when the opportunity of a day off came up, I decided to break this cycle and make myself dinner for the first time in a long time. When I cook for others, I tend to go all out. Sadly, when I cook for myself, it tends to be much simpler. It's not that I feel that I'm not worth it, but more that I just don't want to exert the effort to prep, cook, and clean up after myself. Okay, okay, it's really the cleaning part I don't like doing, and that aversion does often lead me to avoiding dishes that require anything more than one pot.

Well, NOT TODAY! I have the time and I'm going to use it to make one of my favorite dishes, a roasted chicken. I have come to discover over time that I could never be completely vegetarian. While I do love a wonderful vegetarian meal, the thought of never having bacon or the smelling of a roasting chicken again just saddens me. And in fact, the smell of a roasting chicken evokes many of the same wonderful sense memories that baking bread does. Not because these are precious sense memories from my youth (clearly you've never met my mother), but because these are smells I associate with being around good friends and sharing a wonderful meal.

I only started roasting whole chickens several years ago. It was an intimidating thought to roast the entire chicken. How do I season it? Do I brine it? How do I get flavor in it? How do I know if it is done? I consulted a few books and the Internet for some suggestions and over several test batches, I finally came up with my preferred way of roasting a chicken. Although I do have several variations on it, my basic method is to create a compound butter that is pushed into the space between the skin and the chicken breast. I then stuff the cavity with additional aromatics, truss the bird if I feel like it (and most times I don't) and then roast it at two temperatures: first at a high temperature to get the skin to render some of its fat to promote browning, and then second, at a lower temperature to allow the bird to cook all the way through.

So let's talk about that compound butter. I like to have a combination of flavorings and aromatics as well as at least one salty component since I don't season the breast meat with salt directly. This time around it will be capers. I've also used Nicoise and Kalamata olives as well.

First up, lemon zest:


And capers, chopped finely:


Note that if you are using capers packed in salt, do rinse the salt off the capers first. The above capers were simply brined, so I only needed to drain them before chopping them. For my herbaceous note, I decided on rosemary. I've also used oregano and marjoram in its place and they work quite well, too.


And finally, a healthy amount of finely minced garlic:


This is all then folded into a softened stick of UNSALTED butter. I tend to use unsalted butter mainly because it tends to be fresher and I can control the amount of salt that is added.


You then want to chill the butter just slightly, hard enough that you can pinch off pieces and roll them into football like shapes that are easily inserted under the skin of the chicken, but not so hard that the butter completely solidifies.

Here is the chicken (about a 4.5 pound bird) with the compound butter under the skin, aromatics in the cavity (lemon slices from the lemon we zested for the compound butter), and the probe thermometer inserted into the breast so I can monitor the cooking temperature. I also tend to put my chickens on disposable ridged broiler pans and then on a cookie sheet (for added stability).


This then goes into a 425 degree F oven (pre-heated, of course) for 25 minutes at which point I reduce the temperature to 350 degree F and cook the bird until the breast reaches 162-163 degrees F. It comes out of the oven, gets loosely covered with foil, and sits for 10 minutes before I even THINK of carving it. This lets the juices redistribute throughout the meat.

To accompany my roasted chicken, I decided to do a barley "risotto". Originally, I was going to do a nice quinoa dish, but when I saw at the grocery store that 12 oz. of quinoa was $8 and 16 oz. of medium hulled barley was $2, the idea was quickly changed. A barley "risotto" is simply using barley instead of Arborio rice and cooking it in the same manner: sweat the aromatics, coat the grains in the fat, add a flavorful liquid a little at a time until it is done, and stirring the risotto quite often. It is quite delicious, super nutritious (because of the barley), and inexpensive.

First, some of the aromatics: yellow onion, minced garlic, and fresh thyme.


Next up, asparagus and chicken stock (my flavorful liquid in this case):


Whatever the cooking directions on the box of barley tells you, you are definitely going to need 4-5 cups of liquid for each cup of barley you want to cook. In fact, I actually used up all of my stock and then added just hot water to finish the risotto. Also, know that with medium hulled barley, you're going to need a cooking time closer to 45 minutes rather than 20-25 for traditional Arborio rice. Don't worry, though, it's totally worth it. Also, because the stock I used is "less sodium" and not "no sodium", no salt went into the risotto until after all the stock had been used up. It turns out that I did need to add a little salt at the end to finish seasoning the dish. If you are using full-strength store-bought chicken broth, you'd more than likely not need to use any salt at all (and maybe even need to cut the broth with some water). The asparagus went in right at the end and needed perhaps 2-3 minutes to completely cook in the pot.

Timing this correctly, we now had a finished roasted chicken:


And a pot of asparagus barley risotto that was finished with two pats of butter and some freshly grated parmesan cheese:


And finally, after a wonderful afternoon of prepping and cooking, dinner was served:


This was delicious, if I do say so myself. And really, after all was said and done, there really was only one pot to clean (okay, two if you count the pot I used to heat the stock in) -- the risotto pot. The chicken was baked on a disposable liner, and the cookie sheet, completely clean, just got returned to it's spot in the drawer underneath the stove.

While this is normally the kind of meal I make for guests, I'm really happy that today I decided to treat myself like a guest. And the best part? I have another plate just like the one above waiting for me for later today! Leftovers are wonderful things, too.