Chef Advice: Boulevard Restaurant's Executive Pasty Chef prefers PNG Vanilla

By Caron Osberg

Executive Pastry Chef Jessica Sullivan works at the award-winning Boulevard Restaurant in the historic 1889 Audiffred Building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero waterfront. The French-style Audiffred Building is at 1 Mission Street in a building known to be one of the few survivors of the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Boulevard, which opened in 1993, has been voted “San Francisco Bay Area’s Favorite Restaurant” by Zagat Survey from 1997 to 2004. Other awards include the James Beard Foundation’s “Best Chef in California” award in 2001 and Food & Wine Magazine’s “Best Restaurant San Francisco” in 2000. Most recently, the restaurant was nominated for best service in the United States in 2005 by the James Beard Foundation. In the San Francisco Magazine’s 2005 Reader’s Poll, the restaurant was chosen as the city’s best place for a power lunch.

Chef Jessica has been at Boulevard for almost one year and has been promoted from assistant pastry chef to executive pastry chef. “I started as sous pastry chef and have been the executive pastry chef for five months,” she told me. “I’ve been in the industry for about seven years, have been pastry chef at two restaurants prior to Boulevard and just a little over a year ago I went to culinary school.”

Chef Jessica has always enjoyed working with food. “It is fun and interesting and challenging,” she said. “I’ve tried to do other things but I always end up going back to cooking.”

As executive pastry chef, Chef Jessica works with the dessert basics of sugar, eggs, cream and vanilla. Boulevard Restaurant prefers the flavor of Papua New Guinea planifolia (bourbon variety) vanilla “because it is the best vanilla we’ve ever tasted,” she said.

Vanilla adds more than flavor to the finished product. The aromatic quality of vanilla also is important to the success of a dish. Chef Jessica said she believes the fragrance of vanilla it what makes the flavor popular. “It’s got a kind of tropical fragrance to it, but it isn’t overpowering,” she said. “It’s really nice that it hits your nose, then the back of the palate.”

Since vanilla isn’t overpowering, it can be used alone or alongside any other flavor such as the delicate flavor of a pear or the stronger flavor of chocolate.

“Vanilla is a main piece of the body of a dessert,” she explained. “No matter how you use it, vanilla will always accompany everything else. It enhances flavor, adds body and accentuates other flavors. So even if I use another flavor, I’ll always add vanilla because it adds roundness to those other flavors,” she said.

For another way to get the full taste from vanilla, Chef Jessica recommends making vanilla powder. You simply grind the vanilla bean pod as you would grind any whole spice. After scraping the seeds from the pod, allow the pod to dry out and then grind it until it is powdery. The vanilla powder retains flavor when exposed to heat.

“It adds more flavor,” she said. “The ground-up pod itself has a very strong flavor to it.” The ground pod is best for flavoring baked goods, but can be used in coffee grounds to brew a heavenly vanilla flavored coffee or for something many people wouldn’t think to do – use it in a savory rub on barbequed meat.

Chef Jessica urges home bakers to use quality ingredients for the best results. She also encourages home bakers to use techniques from professional kitchens, such as keeping the work area organized. Chef Jessica believes organization is an important characteristic of professionals and she shared what she does both at work and at home.

Part of her preparation at work and at home includes measuring all ingredients before she begins. This is a technique called mis en place, which is a French expression for having everything in its place. When a professional chef begins baking or cooking, they have all the tools ready and ingredients assembled and measured. Ingredients are sometimes grouped together and special preparations, such as toasting nuts or sifting flour, are completed.

This technique has served Chef Jessica well throughout the years and especially when she was in school. “It is important and professional to be exact. I carry this into my home and it has been really beneficial,” she said. It also helps to prevent mistakes by giving the chef an opportunity to spot a problem before the baking begins.

“I have gotten myself into trouble a few times walking away from something to get another ingredient I didn’t have ready,” she confided. “Baking is all science and chemistry, so it’s nice to have everything right there and watch it happen.”