“Choose your poisons well.”
They aren’t words you’d expect from the mouth of an organic food devotee but restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool is no stick-in-the-mud.
She wants people to eat the best they can most of the time, but a little indulgence every now and then is just fine by her. “I call it my 80/20 rule,” she says. “I raised my kids that way and I tell everyone not to beat themselves up for occasionally wandering off the path. We’re only human after all.”
If anyone deserves the occasional “poison” (she favours gin, organic gin), it’s Jesse. An advocate of organic eating long before it became the flavour of the month, she defied those who said it couldn’t be done and operates not one, but three organic and sustainable restaurants in California.
Her approach to food is simplicity itself, a philosophy reflected in her latest cookbook, Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal and Local Ingredients: Choose the best quality produce you can afford at its peak and marry it with ingredients that let it shine.
Homegrown wisdom: Jesse Ziff Cool knows the value of fresh produce.
The affable cook (she’s not a big fan of the word chef) was born into an Italian-Jewish family whose lives revolved around good food.
Her parents and grandparents lovingly tended their backyard produce without resorting to pesticides, they raised and ate their own chickens, her father presided over a small supermarket in Pennsylvania where locally grown produce reigned, and home was always awash with the smell of something delicious brewing.
Not that she knew it then, but Jesse was already getting an education in the organic way.
At 27, she opened her first organic restaurant with her then husband Bob. To say it was a challenge was an understatement; they were repeatedly told a restaurant offering organic and sustainable produce was not viable, assuming they could even get hold of such fare to begin with. But Jesse persisted, even when she and Bob parted. More than 30 years on, she still has to pinch herself to think how far the organic movement has come – out of the fringes and into the mainstream.
“The local movement has been very important for organic too; it’s important to start with where you are, eat food that grows near you,” she says. “Of course if you live in upstate Maine that message from someone in California with its abundance of fresh produce can sound a bit mean. But we need to change the notion of what people think of fresh food.”
Jesse believes fresh produce canned and frozen at its peak is just as “real”, tasty and nutritious. “I still dry my own tomatoes and make pickles,” she says. “There are so many ways to make use of food in season for later in the year when it’s not available.”
And despite the global financial crisis already hitting sales of organic fare, Jesse is optimistic about the future. “Human beings are extremely impatient,” she argues. “But I’m more of a big picture person. When I think of what it was like when I started 35 years ago, I never imagined we would be where we are now. It’s so much more than a fad and in some ways, we’ve moved beyond organic, beyond local… it’s really about cooking and connecting. We’re getting back to thinking about the importance of fresh food, as well as the sense of community it brings.”
A big supporter of local farmers, who she describes as her heroes, Jesse believes this connection with where food comes from is vital. “You know I go to these farming conferences and these people are my real teachers,” she says.
“We need to nurture a real feeling for food and then take it another step further and cook for each other.”
Her two sons might not have been as keen on her homemade style when they were growing up, craving the junk food hits of their peers, but she’s proud to say as grown men they totally get it.
“My youngest, who is doing his PHD at Duke University, spends more money on food than anything else because he knows how important it is… he’s always cooking,” she says. “You know food plays such a vital role in our lives. We sit, we eat and we talk. We can stop doing that for a while but not for long or we start to suffer.”
Now a grandmother, Jesse sees her role as an advocate for the politics of food, for food justice as she calls it, as an ongoing one. She wants to see a fair price for the freshest, most sustainable food available – for farmers and consumers. And she’s in hot demand as a speaker on the topic.
She’s proud of the project she does with student teachers from Stanford University, showing them (and the children they bring along) the joys of growing food from scratch and cooking it in simple and enticing ways. She is also relishing a new assignment to get healthy organic food into the university’s hospital.
“I’m a very present person. I tend to do things and let them go, but my work is very meaningful. I get a lot out of it,” Jesse says.
She has also obviously put a lot into it. “I almost went bankrupt a couple of times… but because I came from humble beginnings I didn’t need a lot of money. You know, I had no clue about being a businesswoman and I’ve learnt a lot with some incredible people along the way,” she says.
“I wasn’t always perfect, my restaurants weren’t always perfect and I didn’t make money for a long time. My success has been in learning to hire people who are different and better than me. I’ve surrounded myself with talented people.”
She’s also refused to let go of a dream that many others thought was hippy-dippy at best, complete madness at worst. “To have something you believe in suddenly not be part of the lunatic fringe is wonderful. For it to be understood and embraced by more people is incredibly satisfying.”
For more on Jesse and her work, click here.
