Jocelyn Aurelien, the new executive chef, has big plans for dining at UMass Boston, including cooking classes and a world cuisine station in the food court.
Aurelien said he prioritizes four key elements within his food: safety, freshness, flavor and time. In the food court, Aurelien is starting a six-week rotating station serving food from different parts of the world each week, including Southeast Asian, Caribbean and North American.
Aside from working in the food court, he is also in charge of catering events on campus, and has cooked for Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco.
He also hopes to start facilitating cooking lessons and competitions. During lessons, students can sign up and vote on a dish they want to learn to make. In competitions, though, it will be two-person teams that must create a dish with a specific ingredient as the main flavor.
While neither idea is final, Aurelien said he has done it in the past and has found it to be successful.
Aurelien said his love for cooking came from his mother, who he described as a “great culinarian.”
“From age 12 to 17 I was the official grocery shopper for my house,” Aurelien said. “I didn’t actually do the cooking, but I was the taster, the person that would do the marinating, getting the spice ready for cooking, getting the fire ready for cooking, not the actual cooking.”
When his mother died when he was 17, Aurelien took up cooking for the rest of his family until he was 22, when he moved to Boston. He picked up a job cleaning pots and pans and grew from there.
“Somehow, the chef at that time took interest in me. So within six months, he started giving me little things to do. Dicing, chopping, then before I knew it, he had me making minor things. ‘I’m going to get this on the fire and watch this.’ ‘I have this in the oven and you retrieve it.’” he said.
From there, he progressed and mastered making soups. He especially excelled in making New England clam chowder, which he says is similar to Quincy Market’s chowder and invites students to try it every Friday, starting Nov. 8 in the Campus Center Food Court.
Aurelien was previously executive chef at Stonehill College, but said he was always drawn to UMass Boston. He attended events at the school, but was waiting for the right moment to apply.
“Andy, the DM, has been trying forever to get me to come here but it was never a good time. And this past, I would say July, ended up being the perfect time,” he said. “The timing was perfect and when I came here, I interviewed again with Andy, did my walk around, met with Diane. After one week I realized this is where I needed to be all that time. This school.”
Aurelien said the best part of UMass Boston is its students. “It’s only a month but my interactions with the students have been more ingrained and more involved than any other school,” he said.
He wants students to know that he can sympathize with the feeling of being away from home and extends guidance to anyone seeking it.
Said Aurelien, “You open your mind, you open your eyes, and you open your heart. If you do these three things, you’re good to go anywhere.”
This article appeared in print on Page 1 of Vol. LVIII Issue VII, published Nov. 18, 2024.
