From "Baby Gangster" to Aclaimed Pastry Chef

Edward Martinez gently places a chocolate orb in the center of a white bowl. To the touch, this confection is hard and impeccably smooth, like a small eight ball.

 His right hand, emblazoned with a skull tattoo, holds a small ladle of warmed chocolate-infused milk. He drizzles the liquid over the orb, accompanied by chocolate streusel and toasted hazelnuts. It soon breaks open, revealing a sumptuous filling of hazelnut and milk chocolate pudding, mixed with more crispy bits of chocolate and hazelnut.  "I like making pretty food," Martinez said. "The first thing you do is eat with your eyes. You want it to be beautiful. If the flavors work, it brings that whole dish together."

Martinez serves as executive pastry chef of Hawks in Granite Bay, which specializes in seasonal ingredients and is among the region's finest restaurants. Even in a chocolate-stained apron, Martinez doesn't look like a guy you'd want to mess with. He stands over 6 feet tall with a shaved head and a black widow spider on the back of his neck. His body is an evolving canvas of tattoos, some of which hark back to a past that he's since left behind: membership in one of California's most notorious street gangs.

Learning to make pastries may have saved Martinez's life, or at least spared him a stretch in the state penitentiary. In 2005, facing three felony charges, Martinez promised to enroll in a pastry-making program, leading to a reduced sentence – and perhaps a last chance at an honest life.

Martinez's Facebook photos show a collage of the sweet and a bitter taste of his past. There's a shot of his moelloux of white chocolate, compressed mandarins, pistachio macaron and mandarin sorbet; an "I heart foie gras" T-shirt sported by his baby son; and the casket of one of Martinez's homeboys from his Fresno gang days being lowered into the earth.

"I never expected to get this far," said Martinez, who recently turned 27. "I expected … (to be) in jail, or dead."

Now, Martinez surrounds himself with sugars, ripe seasonal fruits and delicate desserts. He's devouring "Modernist Cuisine," the six-volume book of cutting-edge cooking techniques. His repertoire at Hawks includes nitrogen-frozen chocolate mousse with gianduja crémeux and hazelnut pudding.

"He's the best working pastry chef I've seen," said Pajo Bruich, midtown's Lounge ON20 executive chef, known for his complex cooking techniques. "Hands down, nobody in the Sacramento market is doing the creative elements he's doing."

The rise of Baby Gangster

Baby Gangster was always ready to fight.

That's what the Bulldogs gang members called Martinez, after he was "jumped into" the gang at age 13.
"I was at the homeboy's house, in the backyard," Martinez recalled, between sips of coffee at a midtown Sacramento cafe. "I'm telling them, 'I want to be in. This is what I want. I want to be a Bulldog.' And they said, 'OK, let's do it.' They beat me up for about 30 seconds. It's weird. You're beating up your friend so they can hang out with you. I got "FRESNO" tattooed across my chest about six months after that."

The Bulldogs have few friends, except for those also inked with the dog paws and "BD" tattoos. Bulldogs are recognized as a violent California gang, based primarily in Fresno. Law enforcement estimates the gang has more than 6,000 members. The Bulldogs, who take the name and logo from the mascot at California State University, Fresno, have no allies and no leadership structure. Crips, Bloods, Norteño and Sureño gangs are all sworn Bulldogs enemies.

Both of Martinez's older brothers were Bulldogs; so were other close family members. One cousin was nicknamed "Big Gangster," while an older brother was "Lil Gangster." Baby Gangster Martinez was "Baby G" for short – and had it tattooed into his left forearm.

He said his turf was on the east side of Fresno, where he claimed "Mariposa Street Gangsters" – or, "MSG" for short. He'd moved there from San Jose at the age of 9, about two years after his mother, Theodora, died in a car accident. He said he still thinks of her baking in the kitchen, surrounded by the smells of sugar and frosting.

His father, Joe Martinez, said his son didn't cope well after her death. The elder Martinez, who earned an economics degree from Stanford University, had hoped his four children would get educations, but his wife's death fractured the family spirit.

"With Edward, he kept a lot inside and started getting into trouble at school," said Joe Martinez. "Prior to that, he was doing excellent in school."

Baby Gangster developed a taste for stealing. He was charged and later convicted in 2004 with grand theft for stealing $2,000 worth of DVD players and other merchandise from a Blockbuster Video.

In April 2005, while at a Fresno fast food restaurant, Baby Gangster thought someone looked at his girlfriend the wrong way. He attacked, punched the victim and fled. According to documents in Fresno Superior Court, the victim identified his attacker as a gang member because of his tattoos.

The victim and two witnesses picked Edward Martinez out of a photo lineup. Martinez was already on parole for the second-degree burglary at Blockbuster. Baby Gangster went on the run for more than three weeks.

He knew he couldn't hide forever.

"I finally got tired of running and went to my dad's house," said Martinez. "I knew they were going to get me there. When they came to the door, there were cops everywhere. I was going to jail."

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Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/18/4421227/from-gang-member-to-pastry-chef.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/18/4421227/from-gang-member-to-pastry-chef.html#storylink=cpy

For Former White House Pastry Chef, Life is Sweet

MARTINSBURG, W.VA. — With his chef’s-eye perspective of life inside the White House, Roland Mesnier served a platter of amusing anecdotes Saturday at a WV Book Faire event.

He recalled former President Bill Clinton’s penchant for big parties and hearty appetite for sweets, which presented a challenge: Clinton was allergic to chocolate, dairy products and flour.

Mesnier — who retired after more than 25 years as the White House executive pastry chef — said he made a low-calorie strawberry cake that Clinton appeared to enjoy; he once ate half of a cake by himself.

One day, Clinton wanted leftover cake and was upset when a butler couldn’t find it. Clinton’s voice rose and he pounded a table.

“We think that Al Gore is the one who took it,” Mesnier quipped.

Mesnier, 65, a native of France, told story after story at Blue Ridge Community & Technical College, where he was a celebrity judge for the book fair’s Edible Book Contest.

“There was a time when he ate alone a lot,” Mesnier said of Clinton. “Even the dog wouldn’t eat with him. I don’t know if you remember those days. They were rough in the White House.”

“No more comment,” Mesnier added as the audience laughed.

Mesnier said thousands of people visit the White House daily during a three-month period around Christmas. If he didn’t start the season with 120,000 pieces of cookies and cake, the pastry shop couldn’t keep up.

Part of the demand was from what Mesnier called “the club of blue-haired ladies.”

Younger women were little trouble — they were usually dieting and trying to fit into size-2 skirts, he said.

But the blue-haired ladies ...

“Beware: Those were cookie thiefs,” he said.

Mesnier described them wandering along, opening their pocketbooks, looking around, whistling — and pushing entire plates of cookies into their bags.

The women later had their husbands drill holes in the cookies, which they would string up and give as Christmas tree ornaments, he said.

“So we had to bake not only for the ... guests, but for all of the neighbors of the blue-haired ladies,” Mesnier said.

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Pastry Chefs Rising Stars of the Culinary World

SAN FRANCISCO — Not too long ago, the pastry chef was a bit of an afterthought.

Sure, there was tiramisu and molten lava chocolate cake. But, for the most part, kitchen celebrity was measured by thrills at the grill, not by teaspoonfuls of baking soda.

That's changed.

Artisan cupcakes are everywhere, Bravo TV's "Top Chef" is spinning off a show "Top Chef: Just Desserts," and TLC has "Cake Boss." Then there's Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," following the adventures of Duff Goldman as he and his crew whip up such concoctions as Viking ship wedding cakes, detailed right down to the breaking waves.

Pastry chefs are the rising stars of the culinary world.

"There's definitely a lot of interest," says Peter Reinhart, baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and author of five books on bread baking, including "The Bread Bakers Apprentice." At Johnson & Wales, one of the nation's leading culinary schools, "we sell out our baking and pastry program faster than any other program, and that tells us a lot."

Dorie Greenspan, author of "Baking: From My Home to Yours," thinks blogging has helped shine a spotlight on sweets. There are cake bloggers, cookie bloggers, macaron bloggers. "There's just been a lot more news about what's going on in the sweet world."

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Like Father, Like Son

By NANCY CHURNIN / Associated Press

Fathers and sons often have powerful bonds

For Rafael and Ruben Torano, there's an extra sweet quality to that bond. Literally. They are both pastry chefs, a profession Ruben aspired to as a little boy as he watched his father conjure his colossal confections.

"When I was 7, I told my mother, 'I'm going to be like my dad,' " recalls Ruben at Charlie Palmer at the Joule, where he is the executive pastry chef. "When I was 10, he taught me how to temper chocolate and passed on skills that I still use now. Seeing my dad in a chef's hat, he always seemed majestic, someone I could aspire to be like."

Rafael, 54, stands beside his son, smiling and wearing his gleaming chef's whites from the Warwick Melrose Hotel, where he is executive pastry chef.

And gazing admiringly at both is Diego Torano, Ruben's 4-year-old son, who has quite a way around the kitchen himself.

"He's already cooking," his grandfather says proudly.

"It makes me nervous," his father says.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Rafael watched his own father weigh sugar and mix batter for the lavish wedding cakes he whipped up for family and friends as a labor of love. His father, a military man, never baked for a living and Rafael didn't think he would, either. Instead, he joined the Army in 1976 with the intention of becoming a dentist.

Then a man, hearing Rafael talk about how good he was with recipes, challenged him to make a Black Forest cake.

He made it, impressed everyone including himself, and never looked back. He switched his training to become a pastry chef for the Army.

The hours were long in those days — waking up at 3 a.m. and working until 11 p.m. to feed a company of 150. But Rafael loved the work. His father let him know that he was very proud. And he had a saying to get him through that he would later pass on to Ruben: "Face to the wind."

The apprenticeship between father and son did not always go smoothly. There was the time when Rafael was part of a six-man Army team constructing a huge cake with a U.S. flag and all the Army ranks. He was finishing a portion of it at home when Ruben, then 4, got a little too close.

"I was really curious," Ruben recalls. "I stuck my finger right in it. He yelled pretty loudly."
Rafael, grinning now, doesn't deny it. But he just went back to the beginning, working hard as he has always done.

"I fixed it," he says.

And Ruben learned from his mistakes. When he found himself working on an elaborate cake, he made sure his wife kept Diego on the other side of the house.

He made it up to Diego later. He made him a Cars birthday cake. And when he was done, Diego was allowed to crash his Hot Wheels into it.

Diego laughs when his father tells that story.

When Ruben landed his first job working for his father, Rafael promised to teach him how to ice a cake.

"He showed me how to do it really quickly in five minutes," Ruben says. "But I took forever because I wanted it to be perfect. I showed it to him and he wiped off the frosting and told me to do it again. I did it six or seven more times."

Ruben was upset until he understood.

"My father told me anyone can decorate a cake and hide the mistakes. But you need to learn to ice it mistake free. I'm glad he taught me that."

As a pastry chef for the Army and then for fine hotels and restaurants, Rafael's work led to a life of travel for the Torano family — Germany, Georgia, Tennessee. Ruben was born in Fort Hood, Texas. They moved to Dallas when he was 6 and he went to school in Arlington before they were off again to Kansas. But the common threads in their wandering life was always food and music, family and laughter.

When Ruben thinks about what he learned from his father, it is as much about attitude and character as it is about his innumerable baking tricks, he says.

"Sometimes when work is really long and stressful, you take all that life gives you and you roll, but always with integrity. You stick to your word and if you say you'll do something, you do it. Face to the wind."

Father and son talk constantly. Sometimes it is to make sure they don't put the same desserts on the menus at their two establishments. Sometimes it's just because Rafael, who collects cookbooks and incessantly studies recipes on the Internet and the Food Network, has an idea he can't wait to share.

They are both similarly motivated by their work, Ruben says.

"The term my dad tells us is 'instant gratification.' When you give your creation to someone and they love it, it makes you feel good."

And sometimes, if the customer doesn't say the words, they can tell in another way that the dessert was a hit, Rafael says.

"I like when they leave the plate completely clean."