Cuisine internship

Southern Oregon magazine

By Janet Eastman

What kid didn’t dream of working in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory? Well, Lisa Graff grew up and got to do that. Sort of. In May, she became Oregon’s one and only chocolate and cheese “cuisintern.” And since her hands-on training sessions, she has never eyed or eaten food the way she did before.

Graff, a children’s book author who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., won an Oregon Tourism Commission contest to become one of seven cuisine interns. Each was dispatched to a specific field, from ranching to winemaking, fishing to beer making. Graff’s assignment: Lip-smacking lessons in turning cocoa beans into exotically shaped candies and crafting artisan cheeses.

The very energetic writer spent a week in the Rogue Valley learning from the pros at Lillie Belle Farms in Central Point. She now knows how to make berry fillings, ganache and caramels by hand, and dip and mold candies infused with spicy cinnamon, Chipotle pepper or blue cheese, and then decorate them in patterns of white paisley, raspberry purple flowers or mint sprinkles.  

From the masters at the Rogue Creamery, a block away, Graff was taught the art and science of producing award-winning blue cheeses. And she accomplished another childhood fantasy: milking a cow. She spent a day at the Creamery’s dairy, where 200 cows munch native grasses on the banks of the Rogue River. Her biggest surprise: Machines have replaced the milking stool.

According to her hosts, Graff was an intern who, excuse the pun, really ate it up.

“We have a great photo of Lisa covered in chocolate,” says Francis Plowman of the Rogue Creamery, who helped arrange her itinerary. “She threw herself into everything.”

Jeff Shepherd said Graff tasted every type of chocolate in his Lillie Belle Farms’ store display case. “She would eat 12 to 15 pieces at a time,” he says with a sense of awe. “I’ve never seen anyone do that. It was like the scene in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ when the kids ask, ‘Can we eat the flowers?’ and they did. Well, Lisa kept saying, ‘Can I eat this?’ and we’d say, ‘Yes!’”

Chowing through Lillie Belle’s inventory, admits Graff, was one of her goals. The chocoholic, who baked a chocolate cake shaped like Oregon on her winning video application, confesses that she can’t remember a time she didn’t love that addicting confection.

“I could always tell when chocolate was better, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it,” says Graff, who claims to now be more discerning about all types of edibles. “I don’t just eat anything anymore. Food has become a more expensive habit.”

To show off her newfound knowledge, she recently hosted a cheese and chocolate party in her Brooklyn apartment. She served some of the bonbons and cheeses she discovered during her first trip to Southern Oregon. But not the special chocolates she made “from bean to bar.” That laborious processes included roasting the dry organic cocoa beans, breaking them open to extract the nibs, which were then ground up to produce the chocolate liquor with cocoa butter, which was sweetened with sugar, then molded and garnished. “I still have those bars,” says a protective Graff.

She can’t make the same claim for the several jars of Marionberry preserves she bought at the Rogue Valley Growers Market in Ashland. “That was the first time I'd ever had Marionberries and they were so good,” she gushes, months after the preserves were just memories.

As for Graff’s future, she knows at least this much: Her Oregon Bounty cuisinternship has not only affected the way she views food, but the way she creates fiction.  “I’m pretty sure over the years my experience will be a key player in my writing life,” she concludes. “I haven’t yet set any of the action for a children’s book in a chocolate or cheese shop, but I did decide to make a character in my latest book come from a faraway place: Ashland, Oregon.”

BOX

 The Oregon Tourism Commission’s current campaign will award four new foodies a culinary trek across Oregon. To enter, send in a 25-word essay explaining what makes Oregon the perfect place for a “wanderfeast” by Nov. 30.

For more information about the Oregon Wanderfeast Contest, go to http://bounty.traveloregon.com. There, you can also view the winning cuisinternship videos and the new chefs’ tour videos. Chef Tim Keller of Nunan Estate in Jacksonville was videotaped to serve as viewers’ wine guide.

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Examiner.com story posted June 2nd, 2010 4:57 pm PT

The Rogue Valley was all new to Lisa Graff. Last week. But then she completed her Oregon Bounty Cuisinternship and the Brooklyn children’s book author instantly became fluent in making artisan cheese, shaping exotic chocolate and pairing other edibles to wines that are all distinctly local, markedly Rogue.

Graff was checking out the Rogue Valley Growers and Crafters Market in Ashland last Tuesday, looking over the fresh rabbit and dandelion wine for sale, before stopping at the Rogue Creamery’s booth. As part of her apprenticeship, sponsored by the Oregon Tourism Commission, she would sell cheese.

During the week, she would also have a chance to watch the award-winning cheese-making process at the Rogue Creamery’s Central Point facility, then hand pack cheese and taste limited-edition cheeses in the caves. Most exciting to Graff was that she was able to accomplish one of her top seven goals: She milked a cow at the Creamery’s dairy, where 200 cows spend their day on the banks of the Rogue River munching native grasses.

Also, the self-confessed chocoholic, who baked a cake shaped like Oregon on her winning video application, worked with Jeff Shepherd of Lillie Belle Farms (also in Central Point) to make fillings, ganache and caramels. She then poured organic, imported chocolate into molds and practiced (oh, the drudgery!) pairing foods with Southern Oregon wines.

At the farmers' market, Graff confessed that she wanted the internship so much that she wrote, directed and starred in her first movie. She remembered there was an iMovie feature on her Mac computer. So she translated her desire to win the all-expense-paid trip across the country into a snappy, two-minute film. She says her boyfriend, who has a film school degree, didn’t lend a hand but was impressed with what she produced.

When Christina Aguilera's "Ain’t No Other Man" song runs out (Do your thang honey), viewers see Graff’s Oregon cake with the frosting message: Ain’t no other woman but Lisa.

[You can view Lisa’s video at http://bounty.traveloregon.com/contest/chocolate-cheesemaker. See all the applicants’ videos at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B0B09D41935768E4].

After submitting her video, Graff says she was “confident” she would win. But when she “obsessively” visited the Travel Oregon website as other contestants’ videos were posted, her confidence wobbled. Weeks, weeks, weeks later, when an email popped into her In Box letting her know that she’d won, she screamed.

Fast forward to the future: What will Graff do with her newfound knowledge of chocolate and cheese? As a children’s book author, she has plenty of choices. Perhaps she could update Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” masterpiece, which became the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Or she could be inspired by Jon Scieszka’s “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” to collect cheese stories.

Or Graff may just reissue some of her own books with a twist: “Umbrella Summer” could become “Um-brie-la Summer.”  While "The Thing About Georgie” could become "The Thing About Gouda.”

One thing Graff promises is that we will read more about her moooing adventures.

Seven internships

Graff was one of seven winners in the statewide Oregon Bounty Cuisinternship Contest, one of only two women to win and the only one to conduct her internship in Southern Oregon. The others were dispatched thus:

• • The Chef to Greater Portland

  • The Rancher to Baker County in Eastern Oregon

  • The Fisherman to Depoe Bay on the Oregon Coast

  • The Distiller to Bend in Central Oregon

  • The Winemaker to Newberg in the Willamette Valley

  • The Brewmaster to Hood River

For more info: Visit the Oregon Bounty website at http://bounty.traveloregon.com