April 15, 2010
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Good Medicine
Atlantic Café Practices Healthy Respect for Farmers
This September, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a new program to develop local food systems – “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” The former Iowa Governor launched that initiative by recording a video. On both counts, Charlene Johnson was way ahead of the Secretary.
The Atlantic restaurateur’s TV series “What’s Cooking Atlantic?” (on Cable Channel 10 in SW Iowa) has always emphasized her direct relationships with producers of fresh foods. On her shows, Johnson brings her farmer-suppliers into her kitchen and even visits their farms to educate viewers. For instance, at A to Z Farm, she showed exactly what Alan Zellmer’s wagyu cattle ate – corn, hay, distiller’s corn gluten, commercial protein and corn syrup. Referring to the adage “You are what you eat,” Johnson deduces that you are also what your food ate.
“Direct connections are so important – people want to know that they can trust the people who raised the things they eat as well as the people who cooked them – to know it‘s going to be healthy as well as good to eat,” she explained.
Charlene and her son Mark Johnson know quite a bit about all those subjects – farming, cooking and health. They have traced their family farming roots back to Sweden in the 1700’s.
“Our ancestors came to America in the early 1900’s. Each generation of the family farmed until modern chemicals made Dad sick. Then Mom became a nurse,” Mark said.
Charlene was head nurse at the Cass County Hospital where she started the Diabetes Center. Mark graduated from Grinnell College as a Russian language major before discovering that part time jobs in restaurants were his true vocation. He started cooking at the Danish Inn in Elk Horn before becoming the banquet chef and later a general manager at a Wisconsin resort. Charlene said she began collaborating with him by telephone.
“He started calling me at all hours of the night, asking me how to make this and that,” she recalled.
Those phone calls increased after Charlene retired in 2002 and moved to Atlantic from Walnut. Mark had been looking for the right opportunity to buy his own restaurant and during one of those calls, his mom told him about vacant storefronts on a somewhat infamous downtown Atlantic street.
“Walnut had been tavern row. It was pretty much nothing but bars,” Charlene said, adding that her current restaurant occupies real estate that formerly housed three different taverns.
“We bought this place one bay at a time. The third bay, on the corner, was a real mess. Mushrooms, over a foot wide, were growing out of the yeast from spilt beer that caked the floor,” Mark recalled of a room that now sparkles with bright, old fashioned soda fountain décor. “The main room wasn’t so hard to convert because it had already added a kitchen,” he continued.
“Yeah, after the owner’s wife got religion we’re told,” Charlene added.
The restaurant was supposed to be just Mark’s business.
“First he asked me to help bake pies. He wanted a sour cream raisin pie and I don’t even eat raisins,” Charlene said of a pie that has been named one “500 Things to Eat Before It‘s Too Late” by Gourmet Magazine columnists Jan & Michael Stern.
It wasn’t long before Charlene was doing considerably more than baking pies.
“Now I am here for several hours each day before the breakfast prep staff even comes in,” she said.
“It’s how we keep Mom alive,” Mark added, explaining that Charlene is unable to take pain medication because of sclerosis and thus copes with considerable other pains by staying active. Charlene counters that Mark also keeps working through life threatening illnesses and injuries.
“The long hours keep us young. Besides, I am definitely not a coffee club type of person. I can’t even sit still long enough to watch a television show from start to finish,” Charlene admitted.
“I make sure everyone sees for themselves how much Mom loves working here. So they won’t blame me if she dies on the job,” Mark joked.
The Farmer’s Kitchen
The Farmer’s Kitchen is no small café – it has over 100 seats in the two bays that are always set, plus an extra room for special occasions. Charlene does most of the baking in a kitchen that makes all its own breads and desserts, except for one sandwich bun. She also supervises a kitchen staff that ranges between two and five people during the 12 hours they are open, six days a week. She still finds time to chat up guests in the front of the house even on Wednesday night’s when a labor intensive, pan fried chicken special draws a large crowd. Holidays are also quite busy.
“We’re the only place open on Thanksgiving, for quite a distance. That‘s why we do it. So people with nowhere to go have a place – especially the crisis center people,” Charlene said, alluding to Atlantic’s Family Crisis Support Network which serves eight counties and also draws from both Omaha and Des Moines.
Mark’s in charge of the menu but entrusts all the decorating decisions to Charlene, with just one caveat.
“I told her she can’t do cute,“ he said with a hopeless inflection in his voice.
Antique signs, notoriously ersatz in most “farmer” theme restaurants, are genuine here. They come from nostalgic local places like Surge Milker in Elk Horn and Arnold’s Meat Market in Atlantic.
“I cleaned out my closets,” Charlene explained pointing to family photos of bachelor uncles, great grandparents and Charlene’s grandfather’s bar in Boonefield, Nebraska. One back wall displays some marvelous sculptures that her husband made of his father’s farm, plus a miniature windmill. Other walls hold lots of children’s art.
“I have a soft spot for that,” Charlene admitted.
Prize Winners
Both Charlene and Mark have won serious cooking awards.
Mark took the People’s Choice prize in the International Chili Society’s World Championships with a recipe that features Anaheim chilies grown by one for the restaurant’s chefs. Mark credits Charlene with helping secure that award.
“I had her serve it. She yelled a lot at the judges and made an impression,” he laughed.
Mark’s Cy-Hawk burger, now on the menu, won WHO Radio’s “Best Iowa Burger” contest this September. Earlier this year, Charlene entered the American Pie Council’s National Pie Championships in Orlando, Florida for the first time. Her chocolate peanut butter explosion was named the nation’s best peanut butter pie. As awards come their way, the Johnson’s shift credit to others, emphasizing the role of local farmers.
“We get all our eggs from Lyman Produce, all our Kobe burger from Zellmer’s and all our regular burger is all fresh ground each day at Henningsen’s (meat locker in Atlantic). We get our bacon from them too. We get seasonal produce from Rhonda Elbert in Marne and she also grows greenhouse tomatoes,” Charlene said.
Those suppliers are not the only reason the restaurant is named The Farmer’s Kitchen.
“Ninety percent of our cooking is complete scratch cooking – old fashioned farm style,“ Mark said.
Charlene’s two award winning pies, plus several others, are available every day. Mark’s championship chili, made with just chilies and meat, is not – he substitutes a tomato rich recipe that fulfills more popular expectations for that dish.
“My competition chili would have to sell for about $10 a bowl to break even. And people expect chili to taste like tomatoes,” he explained.
Their menu focuses on traditional Iowa café dishes. Slow food techniques distinguish them. Hot beef sandwiches are made with bottom flats, far more tender than rounds, which produce plenty of trim for old fashioned stock pot gravies. French toast is made with Charlene’s leftover cinnamon rolls. Charlene’s meat loaf, a perennial best seller, manages a wondrous crust as well as a moist interior, even on the last piece in the pan.
“That’s always the challenge with restaurant meat loaf – to keep it from drying out. We experimented for years and finally tried something we didn’t believe would work. We substituted oatmeal for bread crumbs,” Mark admitted.
In one instance, Mark isn’t interested in prizes. Six ounce pork tenderloins are cut an inch thick and marinated in fresh buttermilk before being tenderized three times and then fried. The result is remarkably tender for such a thick cut of pork. Mark says he knows he will never attain an award-winning color with such a thick cut but he thinks customers prefer a significant piece of meat over a golden glow. People who want their pork tenderloins to look perfect order Mark’s “Pig Lips” which are tenderloins cut into thinner strips.
Work Is Medicine
Mutual experiences revealed insight to the Johnson‘s.
“The restaurant business and the medical business have more in common than I ever imagined. The stress level is similar because in both cases there’s always too many things to do and too little time, explained Mark.
“But they are also similar on a more gratifying level. When I try to explain the long hours and the low pay, it comes down to this – there’s no where else I can think of where you get so much instant gratification. Where you can please folks in just the time it takes to serve a good meal?” Charlene asked.
As for nursing, Charlene says she only misses it when she hears emergency helicopters landing at the hospital.
“That gets my adrenaline going. Otherwise, this is where I want to be,” she said, admitting that they have found a way to bring her two callings together:
“Once a month, we feed the crisis center people. That’s just something we feel like doing, especially for the children. Their world is falling apart and they can really appreciate a good meal and a friendly place to eat it. That’s good medicine.”
Charlene’s Sour Cream Raisin Pie
2 cups sour cream
4 egg yolks (save whites for meringue)
1 cup sugar
4 heaping tsp. flour
1 and half cups raisins
for meringuea quarter tsp. cream of tartar
4 to 5 TBS. sugar
4 to 8 egg whites
Stir sour cream & egg yolks in a saucepan.
Add sugar, flour & raisins. Mix.
Cook over medium heat until raisins are plump & mixture is glossy.
Pour into a 10” baked pie crust.
Beat egg whites & cream of tartar on high speed until frothy.
Add sugar slowly until peaks form.
Using a rubber spatula, spread meringue over warm pie filling. Spread over pie edge to insure firm seal.
Swirl top of meringue with spatula to create peaks.
Bake until peaks are golden brown.Farmer’s Kitchen Meatloaf
8 lb ground beef
2 lb ground pork
4 cups minced onion
8 cups oatmeal
10 eggs
1 ½ cups milk
1 cup ketchup
1 TBS garlic
½ TBS sage
2 TBS salt
2 TBS pepper
for the glaze1 cup ketchup
1 cup BBQ sauce
Thoroughly combine LOAF mix ingredients.Measure ½ lb. (2 #8 scoops) mixture & form into large balls.
Pack 12 balls into a sprayed 2” half pan and press balls down.
Bake at 350 degrees until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees (approximately 45 minutes to an hour).Drain excess liquid & spread glaze over meatloaf. Bake an additional 15 minutes.
Cool & portion.
