Annotated Menu & Glossary

The following information provides a more complete guide to our food than the regular menu provides. We want you to know about the premium food ingredients we use, and how much care we put into their preparation. At the same time, we don’t want to give away the store, so to speak; at some point in the future a Café Bliss Cookbook will make an appearance, but until then the annotated menu that follows will have to suffice. Italicized items are defined in a glossary at the end of these descriptions.

Artichoke Canapé

Reviewers often mention this dish, and in fact the recipe was requested and published by Bon Apetit a few years ago. As a result, we serve a lot of it. Imported Spanish artichoke hearts are finely chopped and blended with garlic, tamari and spices, sprinkled with aged Romano cheese and then baked in the oven. Served with crostini made from our own fresh whole wheat Bliss Baguette.

Chicken Satay

When Tim and Ewa lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan there was a small restaurant at 81st and Broadway that served this dish, and just before moving back to Michigan Tim begged for the recipe from the chef, a small but nonetheless imposing North Korean man with a bristling mustache….

We trim absolutely every scrap of fat from the chicken, marinate it in a mixture of soy oil, rice wine vinegar, crushed Chinese hot peppers and a few other spices, sauté it quickly on high heat and then serve it with our spicy peanut sauce, a healthier version of the recipe we did in fact manage to procure from our North Korean friend — with the exchange of some bootleg audio tapes of The Grateful Dead and the solemn oath to never let it pass our lips again.

Garlic Roasted Vegetable Paté

We brush fresh baby carrots, onions, summer squash, sweet red peppers, and whole cloves of garlic with olive oil and then roast them in the oven. Then we chop and blend them with fresh herbs and spices from our own gardens, sprinkle a little aged Romano on top and roast it in the oven a second time. Served with crostini made from our own fresh whole wheat Bliss baguette, this flavorful paté generally pleases everyone. Vegans can hold the cheese.

Portabella Mushrooms

The almost meat-like texture of this celebrated mushroom is quite the boon for those vegetarians who still miss meat. We slice them thick and sauté them in garlic-dill butter with sautéed spinach and toasted pecans on the side. The combination of flavors is delicious, and guests who’ve tried it once often ask for extra spinach the next time….

Veggie Quesadilla

Because you can’t buy roasted red peppers that haven’t been hopped up with preservatives and sodium, we roast our own, and then glaze them with just a touch of honey for a sweet but still subtle flavor. We sandwich them along with shredded Monterey Jack cheese and spring onions between two whole wheat tortillas and fry them on either side until crisp. Served with our own fresh Bliss guacamole, Bliss salsa, and sour cream.

Spicy Sesame Noodles

Tim and Ewa spent a year teaching English in the People’s Republic of China, and while they were there they learned the many and varied uses of the noble peanut, a mainstay of Chinese cuisine for millennia. Spicy peanut sauce on pasta (Marco Polo brought back Italy’s first pasta from the Chinese), served cold to boot. Who would have thought? But garnished with freshly sliced spring onions, toasted sesame seeds and tamari, this dish remains a chef’s favorite. Order it for yourself though; it’s somewhat difficult to share unless you happen to like the look of dinner companions with a noodles hanging down out of their mouths.

Entrees

Sea Scallops with Lobster Florentine

Huge. Sweet. Sautéed just right. These Canadian sea scallops are a wonderful product, individually quick-frozen (IQF) aboard the ship when they’re harvested. We sauté them quickly, at extremely high heat, in clarified butter, add the lobster sauce (a reduction of cream, white wine and lobster stock) and fresh spinach to finish the dish off. Served on a bed of capellini with fresh crostini.

Wild Char-Grilled Salmon

When we started offering this dish we used a farm-raised Norwegian salmon filet; then we started hearing about the environmental degradation being caused by large-scale fish farming. So we now use a true wild salmon, hook-and-line caught, and in fact our purveyor tells us the fish are never held upside down, which can break the spine; causing spinal fluid to taint the flesh, it also causes trauma to the fish, releasing endorphins that can taint the flesh. We char-grill and top with our maple-raspberry & roasted chipotle pepper sauce, and serve it with sautéed spinach and Bliss Rice. This dish is a double-chef's favorite, championed by both Sarah Jane and TJ.

Pan-Fried Walleye

Many are those who will steadfastly aver that the Walleye Pike is the best eating fish, period. Ours are imported from Canada, and we bone them, dust them lightly in unbleached white flour and a little salt and pepper, then pan-fry them quickly on super high heat in clarified butter. Topped with our own tart Cherry-Maple Chutney and toasted hazelnuts, the Walleye Pike is indeed delectable. Served with sautéed fresh vegetables and our own Bliss rice on the side. Our Cherry-Maple Chutney is also available for take-home purchase.

Chinese Stir-Fry

We made our name with this dish even before we’d opened the doors to Café Bliss, preparing literally thousands of stir-fries in gigantic woks at art and music festivals across the state. Both the Chicken and Tofu are popular. The chicken is carefully trimmed before we marinate it in soy oil, freshly chopped ginger, garlic and orange peel. We then sauté it at extremely high heat, the most crucial element of Chinese cuisine, adding freshly cut vegetables in the proper order of cooking time, so that everything is still fresh and crisp. Unlike the traditional Chinese, we use no animal fat or MSG.

For the tofu version we cut the tofu into cubes and marinate it in almost the same mixture, changing the oil for water and adding tamari. We use the same high heat cooking process as well. Both dishes are finished off with a fat free sauce made of Chinese hot peppers, vinegar, garlic, tomatoes and blackstrap molasses, which sizzles and thickens as soon as it hits the pan. Our Bliss Stir-fry sauce is available for take-home purchase.

East Indian Vindaloo

Blue lump crab meat, scallops, langostinos, and salmon are featured in this dish, which is more typically made from chicken in its native India. Stewed in a rich, creamy sauce flavored with onions, green apples, and our own curry blend, our Vindaloo has a strong following and we occasionally let ourselves run out of it for the express purpose of helping the devotees out of their rut. The bright yellow sauce over brown rice, ringed with deep green sautéed spinach and toasted pecans, makes this dish one of the downright prettiest to come out of the Café Bliss Kitchen.

Linguini Brasilia

This one’s for mushroom lovers everywhere, and is so much trouble to make that we debate pulling it off the menu year after year. But we know we’d have a lot of explaining to do, plus, we love to eat it ourselves, so we don’t.

We start with dried Brazilian mushrooms, which release an incredible flavor when re-hydrated, an intense mushroomy pungence you just can’t get from a fresh mushroom. Then we add some sundried tomatoes to the broth and set it aside. In another pan we sauté fresh Portabella and Champagne mushrooms with garlic and onions until they’re tender, then add a generous portion of Burgundy and let it reduce for several hours. We then combine the two parts, bring it to temperature and finish it off with a bit of cream. Served on a bed of fresh spinach linguini and topped with shredded aged Romano cheese, it is an aromatic, richly flavored dish that’s not anywhere near as derelict as it sounds, or tastes, for that matter. The three main flavors — mushroom, sun-dried tomato and garlic — combine and coalesce in a bouquet of subtlety that’s deeply pleasurable to inhale.

Four Cheese Lasagna

...or is it Five? — Mozzarella, smoked Provolone, Cottage, Parmesan and aged Romano blended with spinach, black olives and our own fresh marinara. Indeed it is five, which we’ll have to remember the next time we take our menus to the printer. This is a huge plate of hot wonderful food, served with crostini and a fresh sprig of basil from our own kitchen garden — you will never miss the meat. A great dish to share, our lasagna satisfies the deep need for Italian style pasta that all civilized people feel on a regular basis. We’re happy to send out extra crostini if you need it. Tip: ask for your dinner salad to be served with your entree; the combination of flavors is sublime.

Sesame Veggie Pasta

This vegan dish has a very loyal band of supporters, many of whom cannot be persuaded to try anything else, even when they want to; it’s as if the dish itself possessed some mystical power to be named when ordering time comes around. The seductive power of the “known” quashes the will toward new adventures even as your taste buds try to forget.... “Oh, just gimme the veggie pasta again!” The tofu is marinated and sautéed to a golden brown, with fresh veggies being added to the wok as we go, longest-cooking to least, broccoli, baby carrots, summer squash, onions, sweet red peppers, spring onions and sometimes snow peas. Add a sizzling dash of tamari and plate it when the steam clears onto a waiting bed of hot spinach linguini; top it all with a generous portion of our spicy hot peanut sauce and a sprinkle of toasted sesame seed and you're as close to heaven as you're likely to get in this lifetime.

Enchilada con Frijoles Negro y Maiz

We cook our own black turtle beans and mix them with onions, garlic, corn and spices to make this tasty filling, wrap it in a whole wheat tortilla with shredded Monterey Jack and top it with our own Bliss Green Chile Sauce. Served with fresh guacamole, Bliss Salsa, sour cream and organic corn chips, this is a major plate of food; hold the dairy for a pristine but flavorful vegan dish.

Tofu Gahn

Let’s face it: tofu is the butt of a lot of meat-eater jokes, and not without some justification. Knowing this, we were determined to make our signature tofu entree one whose goodness and nutritional wholesomeness would underscore a amazingly flavorful dish. Sarah Jane went to work with traditional recipes and her own good culinary sense and after tinkering for some time came up with her own version of Gahn, a dish that also originates in East India. We slice the tofu, marinate it, bread it in corn meal, spices and nutritional yeast, then put it in the oven. When it’s baked to a golden brown we take it out and layer it with a lovely gingery sauce made from cashews, peanuts, molasses, honey and garlic. Served with sautéed fresh vegetables and Bliss rice.

Our Soups & Desserts

Our soups and desserts are always Chef’s choice, and generally Tim makes the soups and Sarah Jane makes the desserts. Typically there will be as many as half a dozen desserts to choose from.

TJ’s Soup Manifesto

Soup is perhaps the best and highest use, finally, to which food in general can be put. I mean c’mon: soup. Magnificent, tasty, endlessly varied, full of flavors, often a complete meal unto itself; nutrition, flavor, texture, goodness, all conveniently reduced to a spoonable matter that can be greedily, joyously, and conveniently consumed. Add a bread sop and you’re very close to perfect eating. There are three basic kinds of soup, as far as I’m concerned — clear-broth soups, creamy soups, and legume soups. Those chilled fruit soups, yogurt soups, soups of pale orange water and celery? Sheer pretension. I enjoy making the true three, with an occasional foray into gaspacho, and try to alternate fairly regularly among them. My soups at Café Bliss are usually vegetarian, although occasionally I will use seafood or a seafood base.

Cream soups are more or less French in origin, and of course French cuisine generally means super high fat. My cream soups, I’m happy to report, while obviously not fat free, are low-fat, relatively speaking. I developed a special process using one percent milk-fat milk and then a small amount of real cream, so that the soup achieves a creamy flavor and finish, but is noticeably lighter and more palatable than the usual cream soup you would more typically expect to find in better restaurants. Foods that work well in this soup medium are mushrooms, asparagus, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, corn, and spinach.

My clear broth soups tend to be more third-world ethnic, where if you think about it, refrigeration is scarce and dairy products, therefore, somewhat troublesome. I make a really nice clean version of Chinese Hot and Sour, which if I may say so is not easily accomplished without a meat-based stock, to say nothing of those delicious little strips of slow-cooked pork.

Another favorite here is a vegetarian version of a popular Mexican soup, Sopa de Pollo con Avocado y Tomatoes Fresco, which after many, many batches still surprises me with its unique flavor. Fresh, uncooked ingredients plopped down into hot soup was not something I grew up with, but it’s refreshingly different. I make the broth with a good strong vegetable stock and a quantity of fresh onions, garlic and cilantro, add a bit of rice and let it stew for several hours. Then we add slices of fresh avocado and tomato to each bowl as it is served, with a little sprig of fresh cilantro, a dollop of sour cream and wow. Another winner in this soup medium is our Curried Carrot & Ginger, which is a pureed soup the name of which alone always attracts a lot of takers. It’s my brother Patrick’s favorite.

Legume soups are particularly great in winter time, I’ve always felt, but I do make one at least two or three times a season as well — because of the nature of beans, these soups are thick and hearty. One of our truly perfect foods is the noble bean, and it’s the cornerstone of many vegetarian diets. I don’t want to brag, but this is an advertisement after all; my black bean soup has been acclaimed by many black bean soup connoisseurs — aficionados if you prefer — people who, like me, will always try a black bean soup as a matter of deep interest and professional curiosity. Our recipe has been requested by both Gourmet and Bon Appetit Magazines.

Other favorite soup legumes are lentils, great white northern beans, black-eyed peas (which of course are not really a pea at all) and small red beans.

Sarah Jane’s Dessert Manifesto

Ah, dessert. Imagine, if you will, a steaming bowl of peaches and blueberries, blended with local honey and spices, “crisped” with organic oats, maple syrup, butter and almonds, then topped with a dollop of low-fat vanilla creme yogurt. Comfort food at its best.

Or perhaps cozy be damned, you want a dessert that asserts. The mocha cheesecake, striped with dark chocolate maple syrup, is serenading your chocoholic tendencies....

It is hard to find a restaurant anymore that doesn’t buy pre-packaged desserts from one of many large food purveyors, all of which offer many specialty desserts items. These items are typically so sweet that they make your molars ache. Sure, dessert should be decadent, but these pre-fab items are often just plain cloying. I believe in an apple pie where you can still taste the lovely tartness of the apple, or a cheesecake that celebrates the subtle but delightful flavor of cream cheese.

Some of my favorites for Café Bliss include Nora Jane’s Carrot Cake, from an old family recipe, Chocolate Mint Torte, and Independence Pie (cherries and blueberries with vanilla ice cream in honor of the fourth of July). Fresh, honey-marinated local strawberries on butter-milk shortcake, Pumpkin Custard with toffeed almonds or Maple Pecan Pie are some other of my regular offerings — happily concocted with organic pastry flours, honey, maple syrup, brown or turbinado sugars, local fruits whenever available and my deep desire to please a healthy sweet tooth whenever possible.

Glossary

Bliss Baguette

We make a dozen or so loaves fresh every day, and it’s generally coming out of the oven at five o’clock, when the dinner hour begins. Fat-free, made only of whole wheat flour, unbleached white flour, water, salt and yeast, with sesame seeds sprinkled on top, our baguette is beloved by many.

Bliss Green Chile Sauce

When we lived in the Taos area we were amazed at the ubiquitousness of the green chile — even MacDonald’s offered a green chile cheeseburger! Another popular regional item we grew to love was the breakfast burrito smothered in a southwestern green chile sauce, and TJ started asking around for recipes. Back in Michigan, with several pounds of green chile powder in three degrees of hotness (canned green chiles are available here but the powder still isn’t) TJ fiddle around until he came up with our version: fairly hot for the Michigan palate but modest by New Mexico’s standards. We served it on our Black Bean Enchilada and occasionally use it as a special sauce on salmon or whitefish.

Bliss Rice

Our special Bliss rice is made with a blend of long grain brown and wild, and we flavor it with vegetable stock, mild spices and golden raisins for a side dish that’s delicious and nutritious. We also bed our Vindaloo on it.

Bliss Salsa

It is now reported that salsa sales in this country exceed sales of ketchup. How to distinguish yourself in this salsa-crazed culture? We did a fresh Pico de Gallo for a while but it somehow clashed with the green chile sauce; we realized we needed something with just a hint of sweetness, and so we created of Bliss Roasted Red Pepper Salsa. Mild by design, but flavorful and full of texture.

Bliss Stir-fry Sauce

In China sauces are called gravies, and there is a time-honored culinary tradition called “marrying.” What this means is that when making a new gravy, you “marry” it to what’s left of the last batch, passing on some of the ripeness of the fully mature gravy. In China some gravies have reputedly been married off for thousands of years.

Our Bliss Stir-fry Sauce is in its thirteenth year, having carefully been married off with every new batch, which must certainly number in the hundreds by now. Tomato sauce, blackstrap molasses, garlic, honey and spices go into our “gravy,” and the result is a tangy, flavorful fat-free sauce that oughta be available by the jar. (It is.)

Cherry-Maple Chutney

Chutneys are a staple of East Indian cuisine, and typically blend sweet and savory; fruit, yes, but onions and garlic too, not to mention a dash of vinegar. We use Michigan tart cherries and real maple syrup in ours, and sell it by the jar as well.

Crostini

An Italian toast served with pasta, crostini at Bliss is made from our own baguette sliced thin, brushed with garlic dill butter, sprinkled with aged Romano cheese and roasted in the oven till it’s crunchy.

Sautéed Fresh Vegetables

One of our daily prep chores here at Bliss is to wash and slice fresh vegetables, which is deeply anachronistic in this day and age, when purveyors offer every manner of conveniently prepared pre-cut or individually quick frozen vegetables. We believe freshness really counts when it comes to vegetables.

I wish I could tell you how many parents have told us that our vegetables are the only ones their kids will eat — they even love the spinach! And who wouldn’t? Freshly sautéed with a sizzling dash of tamari and finished-off with a shot of signature stir-fry sauce, they’re flavorful and lightly crunchy, presenting quite the contrast to the mushy heap of colorless, tasteless blah that most of us grew up with.

There is some variation in the selection of vegetables we use based on the season, but generally you will find baby carrots, sweet red peppers, broccoli, Spanish onions, spring onions and spinach in the mix. Seasonal vegetables include asparagus, summer squash, zucchini, and snow peas.

Sautéed Spinach

We serve this dish as a garnish with both our Portabella appetizer and Chicken Satay, and as a side dish with our Salmon and Vindaloo. It has become so popular that guests often ask for “extra” with these dishes, or ask for it as a substitution on dishes it doesn’t come with. We sauté fresh baby-leaf spinach in a little garlic butter, add a few toasted pecans and sizzle a dash of tamari into the pan. The result is nothing like mother used to make.

Nutritional (Nut) Yeast

One of the unsung heroes of flavor, nut yeast has a sort of a nutty, cheesy flavor, and lends complexity to many dishes, not to mention offering the complete range of B-complex vitamins. It’s also a complete protein that contains all your essential amino acids; with all the nutritional advantages of its better-known cousin, Brewer’s Yeast, Nutritional Yeast is far more versatile and palatable.

Tamari

Similar to soy sauce but stronger and naturally fermented (Soy sauce is chemically fermented), Tamari is a staple in any vegetarian kitchen.

Tofu

Ah tofu, thy name is knee-jerk. More than any other food, tofu has been inextricably linked with the tree bark and dried grasses many people associate with vegetarian cookery. And taken on its own, tofu is indeed the epitome of bland. It is, however, highly nutritional as it contains a high quality protein, no cholesterol, little fat and is low in calories besides. It’s a marvelous vehicle for flavor. Invented by the Chinese several thousand years ago (they call it “dofu”), tofu is a curd made from soy milk. It can be made in many different forms and textures, although in this country “firm” and “soft” are about it. By marinating it, dusting it with spices, serving it in sauces or any combination of the above, you can achieve and endless variety of flavors and uses.