Pork Belly

The pork belly for this weekend's special.

Weekend Specials at North End

Just wanted to fill everyone in on this weekends specials at North End Wine Bar in Hudson:



1) Red wine braised chicken thigh, butternut squash risotto, crispy parmesan


2) Beer braised pork belly, red rice infused with applewood, honey glazed carrots, brown ale reduction


3) We are now doing pizza of the week. This week it will be a white pizza with Italian sausage, spinach, potato, and parmesan.





Few random thoughts:



1) Check out what may be my logo in the future, and tell me what you think. Be honest! That's the only way it can be perfect!

2) Great article on whether to review a new restaurant or not over at http://dineomite.blogspot.com/ Check it out!

3) If you haven't given to help the Veggie U program, what are you waiting for??? Go to http://www.veggieu.org/ to view what it's all about or http://clevelandfoodie.com/ to read more about what local Cleveland chefs and restaurants are doing to help. Call 419.499.7500 and donate $5 and be entered to win $1600 in gift certificates to local Cleveland restaurants (you must mention Cleveland Foodie). It's a great cause, please help.

Remember: Support your local businesses. Buy Local!!!

Micro Greens

Here are a couple items I got from my friend Jeremy at KJ Greens today.

The one is a 3-Way pack of micro greens, the other is wasabi mustard greens. It has a great mustard flavor with a slight, rounded heat from the wasabi.

The wasabi mustard greens will be used on our salmon dish, which is cedar roasted salmon, potato latkes, mustard greens, and crab cream sauce. It is great knowing that the mustard greens are local.

The micro greens will be used wherever, which my include our weekend specials:

1) Butternut squash risotto, red wine braised chicken thigh, crispy parmesan

2) Duck confit, cassoulet (white beans, house-cured pancetta, soppressata, carrots, onion, celery, thyme)

Looking forward to a busy weekend! Will you be joining us?

DANTE

Just wanted to give thanks to Dante Boccuzzi, who was kind enough to link my blog on his blog.

Can't wait for DANTE to open in Tremont! Will be great to eat his food again, see him again, and see how his new restaurant has finally come together.

As some of you may know, I worked as Dante's sous chef for over a year. It was a GREAT learning experience and a wonderful part of my career.

I wish him the best of luck and everyone should go check out his spot!

http://www.restaurantdante.us/

DANTE

2247 Professor Ave.

Tremont, OH 44113

216-274-1200

Busy Busy

Well, again, it's been quite awhile since I've posted. I've gotta get in the habit of updating more often.

It has been very busy at North End. We do a lot of catering, so with the holidays upon us, we are in full catering mode along with cooking for a busy restaurant.

Over the last couple months, we have changed a few things on the menu, done 4 charity events (The Liver Foundation dinner and the March of Dimes dinner being the biggest), and are working on changing things around in the kitchen after the first of the year.

We work with one oven and six burners on a nightly basis. It gets really tough after awhile, so we are looking into getting a 10-burner with 2 ovens and moving the dish area around, to make more room for actual cooking. It can't happen soon enough.

I was also invited to the "Rise of the Cleveland Food Scene" discussion held by the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club . It was an open discussion on how the food scene in Cleveland has taken off over the last 5 years or so. You can read a summary of it here: http://northernohio.localfoodservice.com/ Thanks to Joe for posting that.

A few thoughts and new menu items:

-Striped bass, local tomato confit, tri-color fingerling potatoes, basil vinaigrette, candied lemon

-Pepper crusted NY strip steak, pomme frites, creamed spinach, brandy cream sauce

- Cedar roasted salmon, potato latkes, mustard greens, crab cream sauce

-It is always great to have a capable, smart, and talented sous chef. Thanks Mark for everything you do.

-The "Rise of the Cleveland Food Scene" discussion was great. Nice to see so many people that "get it" and realize what Cleveland has to offer food-wise. Nice to see Matt Mytro, Nancy Heller and Rachael Stentz-Baugher again, and finally meet Michelle over at http://clevelandfoodie.com/ I loved the passion that everyone talked about when it came to the topic of local food and farmers. We truly are blessed here in NEOhio to have the food and farmers that we have.

-If you haven't already checked them out or bought their stuff, please check out my friend Wendy at http://acookieandacupcake.com/ in Tremont. THE best pastries around.

-Remember, please support your local businesses and buy local.

It's been awhile since I've posted. Shame on me. Been a rough couple weeks. Rough in a good way, I guess. Been working on changing the menu even more, to make it more of what I want to do. We've been changing a few items a week, so as to not overwhelm us in the kitchen, but also keep things fresh.
Here are a few pics of some new items on the menu:

Top Left: Braised short rib, gnocchi, shallot confit, port, micro salad

Top Right: 3 Little Pigs: House cured pancetta wrapped pork chop, pancetta braised red cabbage, fingerling potatoes, apple bourbon honey

Bottom right: Seared tuna, edamame salad, sweet & spicy soy

Action

Couple action shots of me plating the Local Flavors for Local Foodies dinner the other night.

I wanted to give a special thanks to one of my cooks, Andrew Dolph, for photographing the event and dishes for me. Andrew is a trained photojournalist, so if anyone needs any photo work done, please contact him. His website is: http://andrewdolph.net

Local Flavors for Local Foodies

On Thursday night, I did a 5 course dinner for some local foodies. The dinner was called Local Flavors for Local Foodies. Each of the courses had at least 1 ingredient that was locally grown. Some courses had multiple ingredients that were local.

The dinner turned out great! At least I thought it did. I was very pleased with how everything came out. I thought the dessert course could have been a little nicer, but I thought the flavors were there.

Here are some photos and the menu:

1) Local tomatoes and watermelon, many accompaniments

2) Scallops, local corn and bacon ragout, candied hot peppers, corn shoots

3) House cured pancetta wrapped pheasant, local chanterelles, brussel sprouts, pomegranate

4) Local pork belly, Asian slaw, caramelized peanut and chile dressing, tamarind caramel

5) Local peaches and local blackberries, multiple forms

T-Shirts

Just wanted to make a quick mention about my buddy Matt Mytro's t-shirt company, Stove Monkeys. http://stovemonkeys.com/

Great urban chef wear, created by chefs, for chefs. Please, support the little guys and BUY A SHIRT!

Here is Matt and one of his many shirt designs.

Charity Event

I just got back from the walk-thru for an upcoming charity event that I'm doing.

It is called "Flavors of Northeast Ohio" and it benefits the American Liver Foundation.

It will be held on September 21, 2009, starting at 6pm.

Here is the link: http://www.liverfoundation.org/chapters/heartland/events/505/

If you are interested in helping to support a good cause, please visit the link above and buy some tickets. Hopefully, we'll see ya there!

From My Garden

These are all from my garden. I got a late start to the garden this year (mid-June), but I'm hoping to get a few things from it. Tomatoes are coming in good now, but no where near ripe. The San Marazano are the ripe ones, but are super tiny.

Cucumbers are coming in strong, which is a great sign and the beets look decent. The next few weeks will determine all.

Press

Almost forgot to mention and thank Nancy Heller and Joe Harvey for the press they gave me this past week or so.



I've known Nancy for 3 or 4 years now as a guest to I think every restaurant I have worked at. She's also soooo wonderful in trumpeting local, independent restaurants. She is always the first to give a chef credit for a wonderful meal and share it with the internet world.



Joe is the community manager for Northern Onio LocalFoodService, a website for local foodie news. http://northernohio.localfoodservice.com/index.cfm

I just became acquinted with Joe this past week when he was kind enough to mention me on the website. http://northernohio.localfoodservice.com//apps/news/local_news.cfm?nid=34002&ntoken=4000599299

Thanks for the press, it's much appreciated.

Jeff

Some New Things!

This past week I changed the menu at North End, only slightly. As mentioned in a previous post, the salads and desserts were unacceptable, so I changed those this week. The way I approached those were to make them solid and have all the products so we didn't run out of anything. Mission accomplished.

I forgot to take pictures of the new stuff, so I will get some up this coming week. Here is what I added though:

Red, Wine, and Blue Salad: Field greens with roasted red peppers, blue cheese, pickled red onions, and red wine vinaigrette.

Cucumber and Tomato Salad: Local heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers, red onion, arugula, feta cheese and apple cider vinaigrette.

Desserts:

-Flourless chocolate cake, ancho chile chocolate glaze, salted caramel, vanilla ice cream

-Strawberry shortcake, vanilla whipped cream

-Mom's mint chocolate chip ice cream pie, chocolate snow

In addition to adding those, I switched the menu around so it featured the salads (and a soup du jour) on their own page, instead of hiding them at the bottom of the entree page. Seemed to work, because we sold 40-some salads on Friday! The tomato-cucumber salad is selling like crazy, no surprise! Use good, local ingredients and you're bound to sell the product.

I will be changing a few more things this week. On my list to change are the pork, salmon, and probably the halibut. Maybe add another steak and, wait for it............PORK BELLY!!!!

Jeff

Big Week!

This should be quite a big week for us at North End Wine Bar. At least from the kitchen's viewpoint.

I've got to get a lot of things in order there. The salads are quite disappointing and of the 6 desserts we have on the menu, we were out of 3 of them on Saturday night. Unacceptable.

My sous chef starts with me this week, so that will help a great deal in getting things organized and on track. Mark has a ton of great ideas and is a fantastic worker and chef. We will sit down and get the salads and desserts in order and then start working on a full menu change for the following week, or so.

I can not wait to get moving on my own ideas and food!

First Day at North End Wine Bar

My first day at North End wine Bar was yesterday.

In all the things that go through your mind as you ready for a new job, walking in to the health inspector on your first day IS NOT ONE OF THEM!

It wasn't nearly as bad as the shouting above may seem. Since the health department recently shifted districts, she was also new to the restaurant. For a health inspector, she was very corgial and understood both of us were heading into this as newbies. No major violations or anything, we're all good!

Just a strange way to start a new job!