Name: Michelle Boland
Restaurant: Oak + Rowan
Town: Seaport, Boston MA
Q1 What is your first or best memory of cooking and who was it with?
My earliest memory of cooking/baking was probably making chocolate chip cookies with my mom. We just used the recipe on the toll-house chocolate chip bag – and I remember being so aggravated creaming the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon (also I had no idea back then that i was creaming the butter and the sugar, just remember hating it). It was SO hard and took forever and I was just trying to eat cookies. Not having a mixer, really made us work for them. Thankfully, its a lot easier for me now (lol).
Q2 What is your most popular dish?
At Oak and Rowan – The most popular dish to come out of pastry is DEFINITELY the Japanese Milk Bread – We serve these individual little pull apart loaves warm with whipped matcha butter and housemade togarashi spice. For Dessert our biggest seller is the Smoked Chocolate Cremeux – We smoke the chocolate for the fudgey cremeux and have an insert of caramel, toasted flax & marshmallow. We serve it with toasted marshmallow mousse, a brown butter graham crumb and tasted flax ice cream.
Q3 What is your favorite dish to make?
I don’t really have a favorite dish to make! I like making everything – and I think thats what makes cooking/baking exciting. Always making different things. Cookies, ice creams, cakes, plated desserts, breads, I really love doing it all.
Q4 What do you eat when you are not working/ favorite thing to eat?
My favorite thing to eat is Chinese food. Like just Americanized Chinese food. And Sushi.
Im obsessed with rice.
Q5 Person you would most like to cook for?
I don’t really have a person that I would MOST like to cook for! I like cooking for everyone… Strangers…. Friends… Family.
Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio – if that means we would be in the same room. He’s handsome. Specifically, Leo from The Great Gatsby.
Q6 If you weren’t cooking, what would you do for a living?
I really love working out and going to the gym, so maybe I could get into that as a career!
Or work at Marshalls/TJ Maxx – Just because I love it there too.
Q7 Not your own spot, what is your favorite restaurant?
Gourmet Garden in Danvers, MA.
THE BEST Maitais made by the bartender Tony, and the best sushi.
The MUST TRY items according to Taste of Massachusetts:
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