Field Report: A Seeds of Change Chef's Garden
by Micaela Colley

Fresh picked produce from the garden is as simple as food gets, but it is a revelation for many chefs including Jesse Ziff Cool, chef and owner of Flea St. Café, JZ Cool Eatery, and The Cool Café at Stanford University. With long ties to the organic farming community, Jesse's menu has always focused on fresh, local produce, but getting her own hands dirty has brought new inspiration to her cooking and her restaurant. As a member of our Seeds of Change farmer-chef network, and because of her enthusiasm for gardening and her sophisticated palate, Jesse is the natural choice to trial our varieties. Jesse's Seeds of Change garden also links her with local and extended food communities.

This spring Jesse dug up her plot on the edge of the Stanford campus and seeded the first year of her Seeds of Change garden with a plethora of our favorite varieties. Eating from the garden daily, Jesse provides us with feedback on flavor, culinary qualities, best usage, and recommended recipes.

For Jesse, her Seeds of Change garden also links her with her local and extended food communities. In late August Jesse's garden manager, Drew Harwood, taught a hands-on fall planting class, "From Seed to Soil," offered through Common Ground Garden Center; the class had the highest attendance of any class they've ever offered. Jesse comments that the participants were drawn by local stories of "Jesse's flavor garden" filled with Seeds of Change varieties. In her restaurant the following week, Jesse ran across a couple who were in the class; they commented that the class had inspired them to think differently about how to plant a garden—to select for a diversity of flavors rather than one tomato, one pepper, etc.

Jesse also recently held a gardening and cooking class with 4th graders from a local school. They planted seeds, thinned beet seedlings, picked beans for lunch, and brought the harvest straight to the kitchen where Jesse had the group help out with her taste evaluations. Jesse comments that children have clean palates and they know what they like. Their favorite was the Roc d'Or Yellow Wax for eating fresh and raw as these beans have a mild flavor and tender texture. They were all intrigued by the Royalty Purple bean's vibrant, flashy color and fascinated to see it turn green upon cooking. The children's initial reluctance to eating "boring vegetables" transformed quickly into a feeding frenzy as they discovered the great taste of fresh picked and lightly cooked.

Throughout the summer, Jesse continued cooking with her abundance of beans and other vegetables. Among the diverse varieties, there are always favorites. She comments, "The Romanos are my favorite bean and the best for cooking. They are sweet and meaty with great bean flavor and are sturdy for steaming as well as long cooking in tomato sauces. Among the tomatoes, Orange Queen and Zapotec Pleated are my favorite, each with meaty, sweet yet balanced acid, not too seedy, with rich, tomato flavors. They are great fresh or quickly warmed with herbs from the garden, for pasta or al minute sauces for chicken or meat dishes."

In the September garden, the Armenian cucumber is now the queen. Jesse is enjoying sharing it with all who visit and explaining the value of its great flavor, juicy but firm texture, and skin that doesn't need to be peeled. She proclaims, "Next year I'm entering the State Fair because even the giant ones have awesome flavor!" Next week Jesse plans to cook the Armenian cucumbers, which are actually a melon, into a lovely aromatic cucumber soup for a benefit for the Land Trust Foundation, in Yolo County California.

When asked of the value of gardening as a chef, Jesse states, "The greatest impact has been the excitement and inspiration it has spread to my restaurant staff. I'm always bringing in new varieties and I've brought them all out to the garden. Now they come to me and are asking for things they want to share with customers or learn how to prepare and cook with. Many members of my staff, especially the Hispanic community, already have an appreciation for farm-direct food, but to get it from my garden seems to bring an even deeper connection and appreciation. They've gained an appreciation for the diversity and freshness that comes from growing it yourself." Each night at Flea St. Café in Palo Alto, Jesse's staff serves a "taste of the season": it is a small plate presented at the beginning of the meal with simply prepared raw or steamed samples of varieties from the garden. Jesse comments, "My staff really enjoys introducing our dining guests to something new for a taste of what's growing in my garden now, right now, that has been hand picked seemingly just for them to taste." Tonight Jesse's taste of the season will include fresh-pulled Scarlet Nantes carrots, Armenian cucumbers, and Red Ruffled pimento peppers. Her kitchen recently made an awesome soup out of an award-winning, huge Cocozelle Bush squash, simmering it with purple basil from the garden.