Lakeshore Cooking Culinary Care • October, 2004

Café chefs make most everything from scratch, use organic ingredients when possible
By Janet Meana

Just about everything at the Journeyman in Fennville is made from scratch, including the dough, sauce and sausage they use on their fennel sausage pizza.

“On a certain level, our food is deceivingly simple,” owner and chef Matthew Millar said.

The Journeyman opened in December as a coffee house and started serving food in July. But Millar does not want the café to be known as a pizza place.

Besides offering four specialty pizzas, the chefs at Journeyman offer seasonal menus with dishes such as braised Creswick Farms beef short ribs, mustard green and fontina quiche. Miss Amy’s greens and Alaskan wild salmon lox.

They also offer such desserts as raspberry custard tarts, chocolate soufflé cake and kismet farms organic pear cobbler.

Millar believes in using organic ingredients whenever possible. He said they are better for the body and environment, and they usually are better tasting.

He also buys locally whenever possible. “But the first priority is culinary quality.”

The Journeyman has a wood-fired brick oven that was installed to bake breads and pastries. It also is used to bake pizzas.

Millar said it is hard to make the perfect pizza crust when some people prefer a bread like crust and others like it crispy.

The Journeyman crust is a compromise. It is crunchy on the outside, and soft and moist inside. “It’s the best of both worlds.” Millar said.

The crust is used for the café’s lemon and garlic roast chicken pizza, roasted mushroom pizza, four-cheese pizza and fennel sausage pizza.

Millar and sous chef David Boyer test everything on the menu and work together to create ingredients and recipes. Twice a week, they make batches of the roasted tomato sauce that is used on the pizzas.

Millar said the recipe was created by starting with a box of tomatoes and experimenting until they found what they were looking for.

The sauce is made with hearty beefsteak tomatoes, onions, carrots and celery. It is seasoned with garlic, thyme, salt and cayenne pepper.

The sauce is roasted in the brick oven to give it a subtle smoky flavor, and then simmered for about an hour over low heat.

Another recipe Millar and Boyer perfected is fennel sausage.

“It takes a little practice to make good sausage, “Millar said. He recommends anyone trying the recipe follow directions exactly until they have it perfected before trying to experiment with it. The fat-to-lean ration is critical.

The sausage has an aggressive flavor with every ingredient having a pronounced taste. “It’s a nice marriage of flavors,” Millar said.

Millar put himself through college by working in restaurants. He majored in English, but realized he loved working with food rather than words. He does enjoy reading, but admits all he reads about is cooking and foods.

Needless to say, food is a full-time passion for Millar, but he does enjoy kayaking and hiking with his wife, Amy. He also makes wine.