Food Finds Columbus: Northstar Cafe

Last Saturday we went out for breakfast and tried the Northstar Cafe. The Dispatch had a piece on it recently (paid content though). An excerpt:

An increasing number of restaurants are finding that the rewards of knowing the grower outweigh the bother.

One example is Northstar Cafe, founded earlier this year with a mission of buying from Ohio farmers.

A seasonal special uses beets from the Sippel Family Farm north of Columbus.

Chef John Skaggs oven-roasts the beets -- he uses Bull's Blood beets, an heirloom variety -- and then cuts them into large chunks that form the basis for the roasted-root salad ($7.80), where they're joined by goat cheese, house-glazed pecans and lots of designer greens in a light vinaigrette.

Another special is fresh-pressed apple cider from Charlie's Apples near Newark. The apples used are the yellow-colored GoldRush, which has the intense apple flavor missing from most types developed for cross-country shipping to supermarkets.

Northstar is now open for dinner.

Where: Northstar Cafe, 951 N. High St. (at 2nd Avenue), 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday

We were there for breakfast with Frankie. There were a few other little kids there, good thing for us. I ordered a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and was initially regretful. Such a nice place, why did I get a McD's knockoff??

This sandwich was exquisite. Perfectly cooked egg, perfect sausage, cheese and served on the best biscuit I have ever had in my entire life. How could a simple biscuit be this good? This is an example of what excites me about food. The simple preparations that have no absolute standard. A biscuit has only a few ingredients. But there are an infinite number of possibilities in the way they are processed - and the outcome is always different. In this case, I wanted to go and sit down with the chef, pat him encouragingly on the back and tell him how thrilled I was about this biscuit. It nearly drew a tear.

Instead, I chased Frankie around the restaurant.

But you should go there. B'fast or dinner, it's about $5-7/meal. It's got a small magazine stand in there, wireless and extraordinary coffee. It's so not Tarbucks. Go there. You won't regret it.

Update: Additional Reviews
Columbus Alive
10TV.com

Viewer Mail: Dense Bread - Part 2 of 2

Recently, I posted an exchange about a reader who, when trying one of Leader's Poolish recipes, had some problems with the final loaf being too dense. Since it's one of the most frequently expressed problems in bread baking, I posted the feedback.

It was revealed in a later email with this person, unlike Leader, the bread was made with ALL whole wheat flour! As virtuous as this sounds, breads made entirely from whole wheat flour are, for the most part, pretty darn dense. Leader, Silverton and most of the baking world use a fraction (typically not more than 1/3 of the flour makeup (by weight) whole wheat or whole grain flour and the other 2/3 unbleached white (UBW)) when making grainy breads. The UBW has the type of protein that gives structure to the risen loaf so it stays somewhat airy during the proof and subsequent baking.

That person wrote me later to give an update. Using the flour Leader uses (20% whole wheat) indeed made a difference and the results sounded quite good.

If there were ever a discipline in which the lessons are learned and relearned over time, it is baking. This individual also forwarded a cool quote from the 3rd printing of the 1975 Edn. of The Joy of Cooking found at a used book sale:

Whole-grain bread

Feather-lightness is, of course, by no means a prime objective in making whole-grain breads. Yet such loaves should have substance without high density. If our instructions are closely followed, you will never have occasion to level at us the reproach of Mrs. Burns, who, on viewing an impressive monument to her illustrious son, exclaimed: "Aye Robbie! Ye asked for bread, and they've given ye a stane".

Roll by Frankie

After a busy couple days, Sunday was a relaxing day of reading and baking. Scones in the morning and some good bread for the afternoon to have with dinner. I made the dough in the morning and Frankie and I pulled it from the fridge and pounded it like Play-Do. I made a baguette and Frankie pounded a piece and then diced up another piece with a "pastry knife" (spackle knife). Hers ended up squashed in a ball and it cooked along side the baguettes. Not bad for her first shot.

La Baguette Modified

In a recent post in C&Z, Clotilde states: "Very rarely do I repeat a recipe.".

I, and most of the world, adore Chocolate and Zucchini but food blogs are not created equal; this site is the antithesis of C&Z. If Clotilde were the pastry maker, I would surely be the stereotypical moody baker in the oven-heated cellars baking from midnight till dawn. My baguette is the recipe (or what I refer to as process) that motivates me the most. That loaf is our dominant food staple and the bread I have the most pride in, despite using yeast rather than a starter.

The prep for it is not as constant as one might think, however. I'm constantly tweaking it and adapting it to a changing lifestyle. I'll be making some modifications to the post soon, but the significant changes are:

1. I use 2-3 grams of fat per 500 g dough. This is to impart tenderness to the interior while maintaining a razor sharp exterior crust. I switched from butter to vegetable shortening for this and am getting an even better texture. Originally, this was done to accomodate a friend's milk allergy, but, it turned out so well I adopted it as a permanent practice. This additive is unconventional, but, in such small concentration, I consider it "catalytic".

2. I'm starting to use the refrigerator for the first rise. I can now prep the dough a day or 2 ahead and when I want to bake the loaf, I warm it up by squashing it into a flat disc (to maximize the exposed surface area and hence have it warm up faster), letting it rest, and then molding it into a baguette shape for the final proof. This means we can have a fresh baguette for our meal an hour in the door. Frankie loves the warm middles and we like the crust. Win-win. Details will be added to the baguette post in due time.

Meet Tom

He's been hiding in our freezer for about 9 months now. We haven't had the chance to cook him. Sunday, we finally got the time.

He's a 6 lb turkey breast. I learned a few things with this one. Thawing for 24 hours in the fridge, like the directions instructed, didn't do squat. On Saturday afternoon, I plunged him into a gallon of brine composed of: 1 cup kosher salt; 1 cup brown sugar; and 1 gallon of liquid composed of water and some leftover apple cider. I mixed this until the salt and sugar dissolved and plunged Tom in. I left him sitting at room temperature for the rest of the day indoors. The temperature of the solution was never greater than 45F (stored indoors) and by the end of the day, I could pierce the breast; it was thawed finally. Much more effective than the fridge. I placed the pot outside (ca. 30-40F) overnight and let it come to 50F the next day (by bringing it indoors) before blotting it dry.

I rubbed the bird (I would've called it Tom in this case but I'm just not that secure) with olive oil, rosemary, salt, pepper and finished it off with a slather of butter. It was 50F outside and not windy; ideal conditions for 'cue. I tossed him on my Weber for a good dose of indirect cooking. I used lump charcoal and opened 1 and 1/2 vents on the bottom and full open on the top vent which afforded a dome temperature of about 350 throughout the cooking. I was shooting for 170F internal; got it in two hours. Since it was brined, I let it go longer (a total of about 3 hours, very little maintenance). The image was taken when I pulled Tom off and tented him with foil for a full 2 hours (that large mass has great heat capacity) and got ready for the remaining feast.

I strained the drippings (collected in a foil pan below) and made a killer gravy with it. Trish made the rest. Fried green tomatoes, mashed russets and we feasted with a cheapo cabernet. I won't even admit the brand. Franky ate a bit of turkey too.

Things I wanted to remember
1. Brining for a full day did not make the meat taste salty.
2. Brining also facilitated the thawing much better than the fridge at a safe temperature (bacteria-wise).
3. The meat was so tender I think I could've cooked it much longer with no fear of drying out.
4. I used lump charcoal and added no fresh wood chips for smoke flavor; I relied on the native wood used to make the lump. In this particular case, it didn't have much smokiness. For turkey, that suited us just fine. But it's interesting. Each brand of lump has it's own native flavor. Applying smoke by smoldering fresh wood is heavy handed and should be used cautiously. Too much smoke isn't good.

Tofu Fries

This won't earn me father of the year but when I need a break to just sit back and veg while Frankie isn't on the brink of death somewhere, I go to McDonalds. Most of them now have flashy big panel monitors scattered about (apparently McDonalds' patrons don't want to or don't know how to read) and our local franchises have been rennovated so they're actually nice inside. And - they have the absolute best child restraint devices high-chairs in the industry. I go there with her so she can eat fries and I can rest.

A while back, her Mom had a great idea. Deep fried tofu in the shape of french fries! I forget the brand we tried, but it was just some generic supermarket tofu but the REALLY firm variety (otherwise the splatttering in the deep-frier is too much), we cut it into strips (and cubes) and deep fried it. We used a Fry Baby, took about 5 minutes per batch. Trish and I ate a bunch. I like tofu and they were really good. Did Frankie like them?

We won't know till we re-try them. We did this when she was a screaming demon child and didn't want to eat anything.

Or sit. Or stand. Or not scream.

Fortunately, that night, Julian and his parents came over to take the edge off. Both kids were much more calm. No one ate much, but it was much more pleasant. Thanks guys! We survived another dinner.

Anyway, we did achieve proof of principle. Tofu can be fried up into shapes that look like those seductive looking McD's fries.

Serendipitous Huckleberries

Columbus, OH.: Clintonville.

I've been frequenting Glenmont Avenue in Clintonville lately (secret reasons you know) and happen to think it's one of the nicest steets in all of Columbus. I was there yesterday taking a walk and came across a sign "Vegetables" in front of a well-kept bungalow. I eagerly ran up the steps hoping for some late-season tomatoes. None. Darn.

I did however see many jars of Huckleberry Jam, an empty tin for cash and a pricelist. I knocked on the door and a woman came out to show me some of the huckleberries she had used for the jam. I never saw one before. They look a lot like blueberries. I read they don't ripen after they're picked so they're actually quite delicate. As I contemplated getting a jar of this jam (the only thing that held me back was the intense color; Frankie could make one heck of a mess with it) the woman ran in the house to get me a Ritz and and a sample of the jam. It was so good. A bit like blackberry jam. And only 3 bucks! What a deal. It was good jam and pleasantly unexpected.

Viewer Mail: Dense Bread - Part 1 of 2

An occassional series here at the weber_cam is when we answer the mail in the form of a post because of its general significance. This is directed to the baking community. This person will remain anonymous but let's just say the mail is from our north; the place with cheap prescription drugs - but that's all I'm saying. It's just a Q&A regarding what I believe to be one of the best beginning books for making artisan loaves, Dan Leader's, his poolish recipe for "Country Homestyle-Hearth Loaf".

Her initial message (I lost, unfortunately) said her first attempt came out kind of dense. She needed some pointers. Here's the exchange:

---

First I gave some general comments (that I believe to be useful):

1. Baking even as much as once a day, you and I could never get the reproducibility that a baker gets who bakes hundreds to thousands of loaves a day. I say that only before saying something as painful as "just try it again".

2. Generally, let's go quickly through the steps and I'll make some pointers to keep an eye on:

• The flour. Dan Leader uses a flour composed of 80:20 white:wheat. I use a smaller fraction of wheat and it's often mixed with rye. I don't like most wheat flours but wheat and rye make for very healthy fermentations. Your loaves made from a poolish should always include at least a little wheat and/or rye. The other flour recommendation I have is I absolutely HATE King Arthur unbleached white. I tried for years to like it and still don't. It just has bad flavor. Don't know what to say. ANY other unbleached white should be fine.
• Poolish. The observations and procedure in the book are spot-on. Your observations at the point of the poolish should be the same.
• My difference from Leader is I simply use a larger fraction of poolish in the final dough. Leader uses around 120 grams poolish, 300 grams water and 500 grams flour - I use 300 grams poolish, 300 grams water and 500 grams flour. I think this is actually a small variation.
• The first rise. The poolish is done, toss in the rest of the ingredients and let it rise. If you let one rise go long, it's this one. Four hours isn't too much. It may appear to be nearly unrisen too. Its appearance at this stage is deceptive.
• The second rise. This doesn't have to be more than 30 minutes but is pretty flexible on time.
• The final rise - called the proof. This is the most critical part of the entire proccess. You form it into a loaf and let it rise. When it's risen ENOUGH, it's docked (slashed on top) and tossed into the oven. If it rises too much, when it hits the oven it will get no "oven spring", deflate and the result will be a tad dense - sometimes cakelike. If you bake it too early, it will get better oven spring, it won't deflate in the oven, but will come out a tad dense - again, cake-like and tight crumb.
• During the first rise, I mentioned it may look like a slack limp lump. When you punch it for the second rise (the more brief one) you SHOULD notice it rise significantly more in that 30 minutes than it did in the previous several hour period. IF YOU OBSERVE THIS, things are going well. If this is indeed the case and until you become more comfortable with the final rise - do the final proof for 30-40 minutes. Slightly underproofing is a far better mistake to make than over proofing.

3. Addressing your specific concerns:

"I just bought the book and tried to make the Country Homestyle-Hearth Loaf, but it didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped. It was delicious, but it didn't rise much."

See above general comments.

"I prefer my bread light and airy"

I do too. That is always what I aspire for - even artisan wheats should be light rather than the earthy crunchy and dense. Those are vile.

"Did I not knead it enough, or did I overknead it?"

I can say with confidence you DID NOT overknead. My machine kneads a loaf for a full 30 minutes. I don't think so much is necessary and you don't need a machine - it's just something I find handy.

"Should I have added more yeast, since I'm just starting out at the bread making thang and probably don't have enough wild yeast cells in my kitchen?"

A little extra (1/4 t) can never hurt. But for the poolish, stick to the recommended 1/4 teaspoon. For the final dough boost to a teaspoon. Could help quite a bit.

"One other thing - Dan's straight-dough method. In Chapter 7 he says that all of the recipes in Chapter 6 can be made the straight-dough way without the poolish, and says to just mix them all together. Does that mean you are only supposed to use the "final dough" amounts in the Chapter 6 recipes, or should you also add the amounts (yeast, water, and flour) given for the originally intended poolish?"

He means add the poolish ingredients and dough ingredients. A note of caution though. Straight doughs that are unenriched (little/no fat or sweetener) are exceptionally challenging. The baguette recipe linked on my sidebar is something I've worked on for about 10 years and it's absolutely awesome but can fail - and the lack of reproducibility kills me. I'll work on it till I die. I think the easiest and most reliable loaf I make "American Style Wheat" also linked on my sidebar.

"Thanks alot if you get the time to respond to this."

I LOVE talking bread. I will never be too busy to respond to questions, just give good detail and we'll take it from there. I may take a while to get back but I'll definitely get back when I get a chance.

Good luck and be persistent.

Kettle Corn Fine Tuning

Like Prison Pete, Martha Stewart is publishing from the slammer. Her recipe for popped corn simply uses 1T oil (she uses olive oil, this is wrong) and 1/2 cup kernels. I just tried these relative amounts with the addition of 1T sugar and it worked wonderfully. I used a 3 1/2 qt. non stick sauce pan as in a recent post. I think a big part of it is: let it go. Don't remove the heat source till the popping nearly stops; it's tempting to stop early. Not exactly disasterous but this results in many unpopped kernels. So if you're not having good runs, keep trying, it's worth it. Martha's publication, Everday Food is linked on the sidebar and it's great for fast preps.

ps: I now appreciate Martha more than ever. It's just lousy she's in the slammer and the rat bastards of Enron still are walking the street.

Master Recipe for Kettle Korn
1. To a 3 1/2 qt sauce pan (I use non stick, don't think it matters, cast iron is not right, retains too much heat and can burn some of the popped corn) add 1T vegetable or soy oil.
2.Place 2 "test" kernels of popcorn in the oil (I use generic white) and place pot over highest heat, covered.
3. While waiting for the test kernels to pop, prepare 1/2C of kernels and add to it 1T sugar and wait for the test kernels to pop.
4. Just after both test kernels pop, remove lid and pour the kernels and sugar into pan and quickly cover with lid; maintain high heat throughout the entire process.
5. When popping starts (within about 30 seconds) jostle pan approximately every 15 seconds to make sure unpopped kernels sift to the bottom of the pan (to the heat). It's tough to say how long this will take because everyone's stove is different. I use a 14,000 btu burner and it takes about a minute for full popping to occur.
6. Once popping has almost completely ceased, remove the pan from heat and dump in bowl.
7. Lightly salt and enjoy. The 1/2 cup kernels just perfectly filled the 3 1/2 qt saucepan I used.

So Long Our Baby

It took me about a month to write this one.

Conspicuously absent from this site is anything about beer making. It's not a mistake. I'm an opinionated chemist with manufacturing experience and I brew my own way and have no desire to share (damn it). I'm an extract guy; I'm process-oriented and make some darn good ale and I don't have the energy or desire to combat the all-grain naysayers. So I don't. My family, friends and I like the brew and that's all that matters.

When Francesca Rose came home from the hospital, I brewed a batch of ale. It was a ridiculous act conducted in a fit of sleep-deprived mania to convince myself things would still be the same.

I have never been more wrong in my entire life.

Life has changed for us and it's much better than it was. A bit more challenging but better in ways we couldn't possibly have imagined. The sad part is the batch is just about finished and I can't bring myself to take the last sip from an almost empty keg. The ale in the keg is just about gone and she's not a baby anymore.

My Newest Food Find - FoodNerd

Food Nerd is the newest food blog to catch my attention. The particular post, Escarole and Cannelini Beans (which we bulked up a tad with chicken and paired it with crusty bread and a few slivers of reggiano) was unbelievable. We had it last night. I never realized escarole, with its relatively soft leaves would do well when cooked. I thought it would sog-out like spinach, but it's robust. It's the simple recipes like this one, that keep me coming back to food blogs. The little guy does have something to contribute. We now have a new staple meal. Something we can make easily, quickly and still have time to play with the kid. Thanks Food Nerd (and she's from Boston).

Dave's Rotten Stinking Wine

Several readers have asked about my recent adventure into wine. And they kept asking. And asking. And they won't go away. So we're coming clean. Deep down we're scientists damn it and we're not afraid of failure. We fail often, but we learn from it.

The crew here at Dave's Beer are an adventurous bunch. We routinely make damn good ale that we'd easily match with the best commercial ales. We laughed at the potential difficulties of making our own wine.

But this project served only one purpose. It made two buck chuck taste like a Chateau Lafitte. It was vile. The Weber_cam is a happy place and a detailed description of the result of this pursuit would not be appropriate here. This subdomain gets more traffic than the whole site and we fear some children may occassionally read this.

We're just hoping the city doesn't slap a fine on us for dumping it into the sewer system.

Goodbye Fresh Tomatoes

Second only to pasta and grains, tomatoes are a favorite staple in our house year-round. Even Suzi likes them. From October to June we have no choice but canned (Dei Fratelli is are our current favorite brand). The only reason for eating grocery store tomatoes during the off season is it makes the home grown, freshly-harvested tomatoes from the garden that much more perfect.

Our favorite dish from July to September is hot pasta tossed with diced FRESH RIPE tomatoes, with finely sliced fresh basil (thanks K & E!!), good quality olive oil, a tiny bit of sliced garlic and salt and pepper. The hot pasta is tossed and the residual heat is enough to just barely cook the tomatoes. The mixture is allowed to sit for up to 20 minutes (very convenient for toddlers). During this time the flavors blend. We eat it slightly warm and topped with finely shredded reggiano (and of course, a crust of bread). It's a decadent treat that only comes 3 months a year. We look forward to it.

La Baguette: The Proof

My Baguette is the most often baked bread in our house but, historically, it's not been the most reproducible. Each parameter seems critical.

I once took a statistical experimental design short course. I forgot most of what I learned because I don't use it anymore. In fact, my current profession only requires me to use an organ grinder and tincup for donations of loose change. But that's another whole thing.

When I did learn it, the first application (other than for chemical reaction scale-up, my previous career) I thought I would try is with this loaf but there were simply too many parameters and the dependent variable - the outcome - was too difficult to numerically characterize. What I do recall is when planning the design, you need to know boundary conditions of the independent variables; extreme values for each parameter. Using either of these extreme values would cause a failure and optimization would provide a value somewhere between these two extremes.

This long-winded discussion brings me to the value for the final proof time for this straight and fast dough. The final proof is probably the most critical part of any baked loaf of bread. Too long and it hits the oven, sinks and comes out dense; too short and it gets good oven spring but still comes out dense. However, this isn't my profession and experimentation with this value can mean my family gets a lousy loaf of bread. I have to be careful when I do my experimentation. My currently written recommendation for the final proof is 20-25 minutes for the Baguette. Last night, I decided to go dangerously close to what I guessed to be the lower limit of the final proof, 15 minutes. Oops, Frankie needed a diaper change at 12 minutes. I docked the loaf, tossed it in, threw in a shot of steam and dutifully went to change the diaper.

WOW! What an awesome result. Great oven spring, good crust, good volume, good color, just awesome. I think I established a new lower limit for the final proof parameter.