1. This was a week with a lot of events outside the store. On
Tuesday night I went to Attwoods on Cambridge Street for the
publication party for Cambridge Local First’s guide to small
businesses. A lot of people, great food and a lot of handsome guides
that are available for free by the cash register. On Thursday night I
went to the opening of the new central library in Cambridge. The
building, by William Rawn, is gorgeous. The event was a happy coming
together of parents, students, teachers, neighbors, and librarians.
It is unfortunate that the city did not site this library in Central
Square, just as it is also unfortunate that the new police
headquarters in hidden away in East Cambridge, close to the
Cambridgeside Galleria substation. There is still a week before the
library opens for reading. I heard that it cost $90,000,000.

2. New England Conservatory always has something good going on, and
since almost everything is free there is nothing that is not worth
investigating. On Friday, October 30, at 830PM, in Williams Hall
there will be a tuba recital by the virtuoso Oystein Baadsvik. This
sounds a little like a moment in a John Irving novel, but I once
attended a wonderful concert by the conservatory’s Percussion
Ensemble. That is a great name for a band or a WMBR show, but it was
also a wonderful and surprising night.

3. Ty Burr of the Globe reports that Boston is getting its own
repertory movie theatre. “All that’s missing is the audience, and
that should change tomorrow, when the Stuart Street Playhouse reopens
as a movie theater and Boston gets its first art house cinema in
years. The venue’s initial offerings will be the Juliette Binoche
drama “Paris’’ and the fashion documentary “The September Issue,’’
screening in alternating show times, followed in coming weeks by
“Bright Star’’ and “Amreeka.’’
All four films have been playing in local theaters since last month,
but the Stuart Street may eventually open new releases. “I want to
make this into a first-run independent and foreign film theater,’’
says new proprietor David Bramante of the 435-seat space. “It’s Boston
- we should have one.’’
We used to have much more than one. Well over a dozen movie houses of
all kinds – including the Stuart Street’s original tenant, the Sack 57
twin screen – used to thrive within the city’s limits. Now there exist
only two commercial picture palaces, both of them corporate
googolplexes: The AMC Loews Boston Common with its 19 screens and the
Regal Fenway Stadium with 13.
Institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, with its robust film
program, and the New England Aquarium and Museum of Science, with
their IMAX screens, fill some of the gaps. Still, Bostonians craving
the latest indie feature or Oscar-nominated German film have for years
had to travel to the Brattle or Kendall Square in Cambridge or the
Coolidge Corner in Brookline to get their fix.
“It’s a shame that Boston of all places does not have an art house
within the city limits,’’ says George Mansour, who has been booking
movies into local and national nonchain houses for 45 of his 75 years.
“Baltimore has an art house. Great Barrington has an art house. I
applaud David for taking the plunge.’’
I saw the movie Paris, and it had all the virtues of French cinema,
including a wonderful, very varied soundtrack.

4. Monday, No 2 09. 7P. Joan Jonas Performance Hall at 265 Mass.
Ave., Building N51, Room 337 the MIT Visual Arts Program Lecture
Series will present “City as Stage, City as Process”, with Ana
Miljacki and Nomeda Urbonas.

5. Its Halloween and we wracked our brains to come up with a flavor
that wasn’t too stupid for the holiday. I think the best we could do
was to use Halloween Oreos with orange cream filling. We’re also
working on Green Apple Rose Sorbet and Apple Curry ice cream.

6. MIT’s newspaper of record, The Tech, has a long article about new
production chief, Kevin Rafferty. Ana Lyons wrote the article and
The Tech has allowed us to use it on our website.

Tosci’s Gets a New Ice Cream Chef, 26 New Flavors
By Ana Lyons
STAFF REPORTER
October 27, 2009
Churning out Toscanini’s newest flavors of ice cream is not a shiny
new Cuisinart automatic, but local Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef Kevin
A. Rafferty.
Tosci’s has recipes for over 500 different ice cream flavors on file,
including crowd pleasing favorites like “Burnt Caramel” and “Ginger
Snap Molasses.” It’s Rafferty’s job to add to this list of flavors —
creating, refining, and executing new recipes each week.
Rafferty said Tosci’s is special because it constantly searches for
new, exotic ingredients and it is dedicated to handcrafting its ice
cream.
“One of the things that makes [Tosci’s] more unique than say, Ben and
Jerry’s is our production. Everything is done by hand in small
batches. In a lot of instances, smaller batches hand done result in a
better quality product,” said Rafferty.
Rafferty joined Tosci’s staff as the first-ever production manager
around three months ago. He was chosen for “his experience as a chef
at famous restaurants and ability to manage a kitchen,” said owner Gus
E. Rancatore.
In addition to developing new flavors of ice cream, Rafferty also
manages and stocks the kitchen, and fills orders.
Although Rafferty estimates he only spends five to twenty-five percent
of his time developing new flavors — depending on how busy he is
elsewhere in the kitchen — he says he’s always got new flavors on his
mind.
“For the quintessential MIT student,” Rafferty envisions a double
espresso flavor with a twist. “It’d have to be something heavy in
caffeine with some sort of puzzle … something to figure out or
something to keep the brain busy and make it interesting,” he said.
Rafferty said he heard about Tosci’s ice cream maker position through
a Craigslist posting, and thought “What the hell. It’d be interesting
to try something different.” Before joining Tocsi’s, Rafferty was the
executive chef of Great Bay, a seafood restaurant in Kenmore Square
that shut down in May.

Unique and Unusual Flavors

In his past three months at Tosci’s, Rafferty has developed over 26
different flavors of ice cream — some of his favorites are “Drunken
Three Musketeers” (bourbon flavored ice cream and Three Musketeers
candy bars) and “B3,” consisting of brown sugar, brown butter, and
brownies.
Rafferty said he might follow up on the popular “B3” flavor with a
“C4” flavor which he envisions would include chocolate chips and
caramel ice cream with cookie crumbs.
Because of his extensive training as a chef on the “hot side,”
Rafferty often turns to ingredients used less commonly in the ice
cream industry such as miso (fermented soy bean paste), Japanese mint
leaves, and the spice caraway. From these ingredients, Rafferty has
created such flavors as “cranberry and lemon Japanese mint sorbet” and
“pickled plum sorbet.”
Tosci’s churns about 50 flavors a week, according to Rancatore. Every
week’s menu is a combination of traditional flavors as well as some
new ones. Though Tosci’s is known for its adventuresome flavors,
Rancatore said they never make “stupid” flavors.
“We don’t make shark or chicken turkey,” Rancatore said, although he
said Tosci’s has made flavors involving avocado and garlic.
But even those odd ingredients worked. “Avocado is a popular flavor in
Latin America and parts of the Pacific” for it’s rich and creamy
flavor, said Rancatore. “Garlic is certainly unusual,” but he notes
that black garlic ice cream is a popular dish in Korea when served
with oysters.
“Sometimes ice creams can be savory. The most unusual flavors are
probably made by the best chefs intent on achieving exotic surprises,”
said Rancatore.
Rafferty likes that people in Cambridge are open to new flavors. “Even
with some of the more exotic flavors, we almost always have someone
that likes them,” Rafferty said.

Holiday and seasonal themes

Sometimes, Rafferty gets inspiration from seasonal ingredients and the
holidays. He’s currently working on an apple pie flavor for the fall,
although keeping the graham cracker crumbs crisp and the apples from
frosting in storage has proven to be problematic, he said. For
Halloween he’s contemplating a “goodie bag” flavor that combines lots
of classic Halloween candies.
Rancatore said Tosci’s also makes a champagne sorbet for New Years and
hamentashen for the winter Jewish holiday Purim.
In the fall, Tosci’s makes a Concord grape sorbet. In the summer,
Rancatore said that he likes to take advantage of the local peaches
and berries.

What the job entails

Rancatore said ice cream makers need to have “supertasting” abilities,
a knack for thinking up tasty new concoctions, and the ability to
reproduce their hits over and over again. They are artists.
“Ice cream makers need to follow recipes and extrapolate. They should
be curious about ice cream and food. They should eat and read and be
ready to take advantage of a serendipitous moment,” says Rancatore.
Rancatore says Tosci’s rarely has more than three ice cream makers
beside himself at a time. The number peaks during summer.
“Everyone wants to make ice cream but very few of the people who work
here [actually make ice cream],” Rancatore said. “I think it is
important for a small number of people to regularly make ice cream.”
With the most recent addition of Rafferty, Tosci’s currently has three
ice cream makers, including Rancatore.
Rancatore thinks that there might be some correlation between ice
cream making capabilities and the ability to perform classic music. “I
have thought that classical music students might be a good place to
find ice cream makers,” he says. “They understand notions of
incremental and constant improvement and believe that good music is a
result of merging spontaneous authenticity and an inherited framework
or tradition.”
Rancatore noted that when the store first opened in 1981, several of
the best employees were women rowers from Boston University. They
followed directions well and had the “extra benefit of being strong
and possessing a lot of stamina.”
“So maybe what we need [in an ice cream maker] is a New England
Conservatory student who rows and is a supertaster,” Rancatore joked.

The scoop on MIT

Several MIT students and faculty have helped develop Tosci’s ice cream
flavors over the years.
S. Adam Simha ’88 finalized the recipes for the flavors Burnt Caramel
and also Dark Chocolate. Sinha later became an award-winning bread
maker and now owns MKS Design, which Rancatore said made most of the
furniture in Tosci’s.
Rancatore said that the ice cream shop has only ever made one flavor
named after a person — Paul Slovenski, a track and field coach a MIT.
“One day I was in the store when a short, intense man came up to me
and said with determination that he wanted a flavor to be named after
him,” Rancatore said. “Instead of saying ‘we don’t do that,’ I asked
him what his name was and he said ‘Sluggo.’” Thus, Chocolate Sluggo
was born.
Rancatore says Chocolate Sluggo is a light Belgian Chocolate layered
with dark Cocoa pudding” plus almonds, chocolate chips, and Hydrox
cookies. “I’ll make it some Thursday,” he said.
It includes a wonderful picture, taken by Dhaval Adjodah.

http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N48/makeicecream.html

7. This is the last Friday of the month so ride or walk to work and
wear green, or convince us of your good intentions and we be extra
nice to you. We will be part of a benefit for Cambridge Housing
Assistance on Friday night, at the always fabulous Hyatt on Memorial
Drive. Saturday and Sunday we will serve Breakfast@TheBigTable.
Monday is the first Monday of the month so watch out for the tow
trucks if you live in Cambridge.