Gastronomy Graduate Barbara Rotger featured in the Boston Globe
Gastronomy graduate Barbara Rotger was featured in the Boston Globe today. Barbara was interviewed about her fascinating research on recipe collections. See our recent blog post to read more about Barbara's work and graduating project.
Alumna profile: Karoline Boehm-Goodnick
by Erin Carlman Weber
When Karoline Boehm-Goodnick took a sharp detour from her plan to be a lawyer, she encountered some accurate pessimists.
“Everyone was so negative when I told them I was going to culinary school. And everything they said—that you’re not going to make any money, that you always have to work holidays—it’s all true.”
But the Gastronomy graduate isn’t complaining. She made a good move in abandoning a future of court briefs, depositions, and juries to pursue her current life as the general manager of a bakery who moonlights as a food writer, photographer, and food stylist. Her Gastronomy studies took her to Argentina for five months, where she researched malbec for her thesis. And now, back stateside and living in San Francisco with her husband, she has a hectic but happy life, mixing work in a professional kitchen with other food-related pursuits.
Boehm-Goodnick has her hands in a bit of everything at Mission Pie, a Bay Area bakeshop and café. She spends time in the kitchen, on administrative detail, and manages the front of house staff. She also occasionally runs classes for the public. With these educational efforts, she leans on her Gastronomy knowledge, using it to place food and drink in a larger cultural picture.
But for this culinary multitasker, Sheryl Julian’s food writing class was the most “monumental” part of her BU education. The course kick started her freelance writing and food styling work. Since then, she’s been a regular contributor to The Boston Globe and has written for several other publications and websites. She’s happy to be maintaining what she calls “the beauty of the balance,” moving her culinary and writing careers forward simultaneously.
And despite the occasionally chaotic nature of her various jobs, Boehm-Goodnick is sure she’s in the right place. “There’s nothing in this world I’d rather be doing. I’d die in an office setting," she says.
Looks like law school would have been a bad move after all.
Keep up with Karoline on her blog, Karoline’s Kitchen.
A grateful farewell
Now that the semester has come to a close, so has my time as editor of this site. The process of building, launching, and maintaining the Gastronomy at BU blog was a wonderfully instructive experience, and I'd like to thank Dr. Black for the opportunity. My gratitude also goes out to all who contributed writing, ideas, suggestions, and other help this semester. Your support and efforts helped this blog develop into an interesting peek into the lives, work, and activities of Gastronomy students and faculty. And I'd be terribly remiss if I didn't acknowledge Annaliese DeNooyer, without whom this site would be a little less lovely. You'll notice her photos all over the place, including the ones below from the end-of-semester potluck that Emily Olson organized last week. The meal was as impressive as I've come to expect from my fellow Gastronomers, and a tasty way to wrap up the last few months. I look forward to breaking bread with you all again in the fall, and to watching this site grow and evolve over the coming semesters.
Enjoy summer! (If it ever arrives...)
- Erin Carlman Weber, Spring 2011 Communications Graduate Assistant
Jacques Pépin named Honorary Doctor
Gastronomy Program founder, Jacques Pépin, has been named Honorary Doctor of Human Letters by Boston University. Pépin will be honored on May 21, 2011 at Commencement.
In addition, there will be a series of lectures, discussions and demonstrations entitled "The French-American Connection with Jacques Pépin."
Wednesday, May 18, and Friday, May 20, 6 p.m.
Wednesday: The French-American Connection
Kyri Claflin, lecturer in the MLA in Gastronomy program at Boston University, will introduce our speakers: William Keylor, BU professor of history, who will discuss political connections between the two countries; and Jonathan Ribner, BU associate professor of art history, who will present "The Unstill Life: A Transatlantic Perspective." These talks will be followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Claflin, featuring French chefs discussing their experiences emigrating to the United States. We are proud to have Jacques Pépin, Jean-Claude Szurdak, Jean-Jacques Paimblanc, Raymond Ost, and Jacky Robert as our distinguished panel guests. The event will be followed by a reception.
$20
Meets in the Conference Auditorium of the George Sherman Union (GSU) Building, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, 2nd Floor.
Friday: Jacques Pépin: Remembrance of Things Past
Jacques Pépin was born in Bourg-en-Bresse, near Lyon, where his first exposure to cooking was as a child in his parents' restaurant, Le Pélican. Today, Pépin is one of America's best-known chefs, cookbook authors, and cooking teachers, with 26 books—including his autobiography, The Apprentice—and numerous articles to his credit. He has also hosted ten acclaimed cooking series on public television. Pépin, along with Julia Child, helped found the Certificate Program in the Culinary Arts and the Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy at Boston University, where he continues to teach each semester. Pépin and his colleague, noted chef Jean-Claude Szurdak, will return to Boston University to recreate a complete bistro meal from Le Pélican, using Pépin's mother's recipes and recalling the beginning of his apprenticeship. Regional wines will be paired.
$150, includes copy of The Apprentice
Meets in the Demonstration Room,
808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 117.
For more information, please contact the Office of Lifelong Learning.
Graduating Project: Kristen Shelly’s Recognition of Novel Colors in Fruit-Flavored Beverages
by Kristen Shelly
When a banana with vibrant yellow skin and mottled age spots sits in the produce section, it sends a clue to the shopper that this banana is best for baking or immediate gratification. This banana will decidedly not wait for breakfast in three days. Without color, such snap decisions to eat, store, or toss food would be nearly impossible. Appearance is the first thing consumed during a meal, and anyone who has sat down to an otherwise delicious dinner of white rice, baked chicken, and cauliflower knows the added value of herbs or the pop of a carrot.
Vision as a sensory complement to taste first interested me in Experiencing Food through the Senses (MET ML 715). What most caught my attention was how oddly colored foods could captivate or disgust consumers. This led to a final paper that situated and deconstructed the myth of blue food. While writing this, sensory studies formed the bulk of my research: scientifically designed tests and surveys that tease out how color influences flavor. I was struck by how many studies disregard the potential importance of these novelty colors. With all of the food products congesting grocery shelves that boast “fun” colors such as blue-raspberry and pink lemonade, couldn’t these color and flavor pairs form an acceptable response in these studies?
Some more recent work has taken an interdisciplinary focus, looking at culture and age rather than assuming that all participants share the same experiences. For my thesis project I folded this approach into a taste test and survey of common fruit flavors to ascertain color and flavor pairings between a younger and older population. My hypothesis was that a younger demographic with more exposure to novel-colored foods would classify these color and flavor pairs as acceptable or appropriate, despite the labeling of such pairs as inappropriate in many studies.
Well, my hypothesis was wrong! But it raises so many more interesting questions. The younger group more often chose conventional colors for their responses, and with more strength than the older group. For some flavors, the older group lacked cohesion in their replies, with color selections all over the map. Surprisingly, the only novel color pair to take the spotlight was pink with lemon, in the older group. Was pink lemonade more popular in the past? With the semester coming to an end, someone else will have to tackle that. What’s certain is that I will be overanalyzing food colors long after finishing the program.
Student Profile: Emily Olson
Hometown: Memphis, Tennessee
What did you do before enrolling in the program?
In a former life, I was a corporate communications specialist for FedEx Services at the headquarters in Memphis. I managed strategic events and initiatives (involving employees, executives, or customers) for the corporation and enjoyed the benefits of travel throughout the United States.
After five years, I decided to turn in my badge and move to Chicago to attend culinary school at Kendall College. For my internship, I joined Frontera Foods, a specialty Mexican foods company owned by Chef Rick Bayless and business partners. I assisted the culinary director and marketing manager with quality assurance testing, recipe development, and flavor research projects. I also spent several weeks in the kitchens of Topolobampo and Frontera Grill learning the fine art of mole, picking up "kitchen Spanish," and understanding the complexity of the Mexican cuisine. Upon graduation in 2008, I assumed the role of associate culinary and marketing manager for six months due to the marketing manager's maternity leave. Managing the portfolio of Frontera's salsas, frozen pizzas, and cooking sauces in addition to developing private label products (from concept to hitting a store's shelf) for national retailers was a huge task, but I learned a great deal about the specialty foods business and the inner workings of food manufacturing.
After Frontera Foods, I joined a boutique consultancy, Food Marketing Support Services, as a project manager and later was promoted to operations team leader. The company uses sensory science and consumer research to develop or tweak foods and beverages for Fortune 500 companies. Having no prior experience in sensory science, the learning curve was uphill and shed some light on a whole new way of viewing food R&D. After a turn of events due to a job loss, I dusted off the application I'd been eyeing for a while, decided it was time to apply to BU's Gastronomy program, hope for an acceptance, and move to the East Coast.
Why are you studying Gastronomy?
I always wanted to know how food connected cultures and why we eat what we eat. The Gastronomy program offers coursework in areas that fill in the blanks from my undergraduate and culinary school studies. Exposure to a liberal arts education was new to me, and it's opened my eyes to theories, frameworks, and writers that I didn't know existed.
What would you like to do after you graduate?
There are 57 things I would like to do, but its difficult to project what that picture will look like in May 2012. A PhD interests me, but I would prefer for that to be fully funded. Furthering my wine education would be stellar as would working for a start-up specialty food company or creating my own company from scratch. I've always wanted to combine business with food. It's just a matter of putting the pieces together.
Favorite Gastronomy course so far:
This might be an easy way out, but all of my classes have been my favorite. Each course connects to another or introduces a new idea. For example, the Theory and Methodology class provided a foundation and basic understanding of ethnography which lead me to enroll in Carole Counihan's ethnography course for a deeper dive.
Practicing Gastronomy rescheduled for May 4
In order to allow people to attend Neil Coletta's going away gathering before Wednesday classes, we have rescheduled the Practicing Gastronomy discussion. Our chat with Chefs Collaborative program director Leigh Belanger will be held the following Wednesday, May 4, from 4:45 to 5:45pm.
Please drop in on Neil in room 117 from 5 to 7pm on Wednesday, April 27 and wish him well as he prepares to begin graduate studies in Buffalo, New York.
Food news roundup: April 22
From around the web this week, a few bites of food news. Feel free to to share thoughts, reactions, and other items of interest.
Farm-to-table-to-farm: Restaurants and composting
Ethical tomatoes: A new curriculum for migrant workers
Wild and free, but is roadkill safe to eat?
Republican budget includes overhaul of food stamps
Why food is still cheap in America
Outside of the Classroom: Kristen Richards and Cooking Matters
by Kristen Richards
In 2004, my friend, an Americorp VISTA for the Eastern Massachusetts chapter of Share Our Strength, asked if I would be willing to teach the cooking skills I had learned in professional kitchens on a volunteer basis for Cooking Matters, a sub-organization of Share Our Strength. She explained what would be expected of me: I’d teach a group of people at high risk of childhood hunger and malnutrition (including low-income parents and their children) healthy cooking on a budget. My interest was immediately piqued. Although this seemed like an ideal non-profit venture for me given my love for food, I had no idea how much this organization would come to mean to me.
After seven years, I have taught the Cooking Matters (formerly known as Operation Frontline) course to eight groups of parents, teens, and children. During the courses, a nutritionist and I travel to a Boston neighborhood (Chelsea, Roxbury, Charlestown, and East Boston, to name a few), teach a group of 10 to 16 participants basic nutrition, and then demonstrate how they can cook healthy, tasty, and culturally appropriate food on a limited time and dollar budget. Throughout the course of the six weeks, the participants’ understanding and appreciation for their health seem genuinely transformed. In week one we get to know the participants, most of whom declare that they “hate cooking” or “only like fried foods,” but by week six, almost all of them are excited about cooking and are proud to show their families what they have learned from Cooking Matters.
While the mission to end childhood hunger in the United States can seem hopeless at times, Cooking Matters chips away at this problem by improving the nutrition of smaller communities across the country. Additionally, by providing participants with knowledge rather than food supplies, those in need are better equipped to make a positive change in their diets and lifestyles. They’re also more likely to do so when they understand that fresh and healthy food can be enjoyed by all, even with limited time and funds.
Cooking Matters is constantly looking for more volunteers to fill the chef and nutritionist roles for their courses. If you’re interested, or have any questions, feel free to contact me at kricha612@gmail.com.
Practicing Gastronomy with Leigh Belanger
Practicing Gastronomy is a series of informal discussions with professionals from all corners of the food and drink world. Here’s a preview of our next guest.
The intangible benefits of Leigh Belanger’s work for Chefs Collaborative aren’t too shabby. She gets to work for something she believes in, striving to expand the sustainable food landscape by sharing knowledge and forging relationships among culinary professionals. But she admits she doesn’t mind the occasions on which they get to celebrate their efforts. Working with chefs, she says, means good eating.
Chefs Collaborative is a Boston-based nonprofit network that connects chefs around issues of food sustainability. Leigh’s been their program director for four years, overseeing and implementing the organization’s educational and community building efforts. Before joining up with Chefs Collaborative, Leigh served, managed, and cooked in restaurants, and also worked as a freelance food writer. She’s kept up the multitasking. She’s close to finishing her MLA in Gastronomy, and she recently submitted her first cookbook manuscript. She runs a holiday cookie business, too.
Leigh will be the next participant in our Practicing Gastronomy discussion series. Please join us for a conversation about her work with a food-focused nonprofit, plus her array of other culinary pursuits.
EVENT INFORMATION:
Wednesday, May 4
808 Commonwealth Avenue
Room 122
4:45 - 5:45pm