By Bonnie S. Benwick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
People have come to know Odessa Piper as a champion of regional foods, successful restaurant owner, committed teacher, award-winning chef and wise soul. When she's at the farmers markets, though, which is where you'll find her every weekend, her calling becomes clear.
She's a pollinator.
"I get a little like a dizzy bee," she says, moving among the patrons who hover around the stands on a steamy Saturday in June at the Silver Spring market. It's a short bike ride from her home, and she'll visit the market in Takoma Park or Dupont Circle the next day as well.
The slender 55-year-old is keen to load up her basket with herbs from the longtime local growers, fresh whole chickens and organic flowers that will lend grace as centerpiece and salad ingredients. But she says her role there is to share information and support as many of the producers as she can.
And if Piper can ease a customer into trying something new, like anise hyssop, the culinarily underappreciated herb she's currently in "Johnny Appleseed mode" about, her efforts are rewarded.
It's a role she grew into during her late teens and early 20s as she learned to farm and forage in her native New Hampshire, and in the almost three decades when she ran L'Etoile, a restaurant in downtown Madison, Wis., known for its regionally reliant cuisine.
There, Piper developed working relationships with 100 farmers, using their vegetables, fruit, cheeses and meats in ways that were simple yet groundbreaking in the Midwest of the 1970s. It is no coincidence that the Dane County Farmers' Market, across the street from L'Etoile, simultaneously became the largest producer-only market in the country.
She has legend status among America's food luminaries, yet she remains modest. No formal training, she offers as a frequent disclaimer; not like the scores of aspiring young chefs who worked stints in L'Etoile's kitchen, or the faculties of famous culinary schools that have asked her to teach the teachers about making connections between farmers and restaurant ingredients. Piper hopes to put more energy into that kind of instruction in the near future.
"She's the epitome of strength and femininity, gentle and wise, with a strength of mission," says Eve Felder, associate dean of culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. "Odessa took a really challenging area of the country and was able to be successful with local, sustainable food."
Over the years, Piper's name and philosophy about food have become linked with Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame. Piper might have brought that on herself in the 1980s in attempting to explain sustainability and seasonal, organic cooking to journalists who would come to call. The result: Odessa, the Alice Waters of the Midwest.
"I went to California to meet her in the mid-'80s and presented her with hickory nuts and pieces of Wisconsin cheese," she says. "Alice is wonderful, deeply generous. What I was doing wasn't as finessed. I can't speak highly enough of her."
The feeling's mutual. Reached at her office in Berkeley, Waters relayed that "Odessa was a pioneer, supporting a network of suppliers in the cold, difficult climate of Wisconsin. To this day, she remains a purist."
A famous chef with no cookbook, no celebrity vehicle? "I'm working on the cookbook," she says.
Piper revels in being able to shop and cook in relative anonymity around Washington. Demands for her time are carefully considered. Most recently, she and New York chef Dan Barber co-chaired the food events for last month's James Beard Foundation awards in Manhattan, where her husband, Terry Theise, picked up the honor as outstanding wine professional of the year. (Piper won for best chef of the Midwest in 2001.)
At the Saturday market, she chats casually with organic grower Jonathan Partin of Welsh Gardens in Warrenton about applications for different lavenders and how his seasonal plantings are progressing. But as her focus intensifies on choosing stems of calendula and bachelor buttons, he acknowledges in a whisper, "She's kind of a culinary genius, isn't she?"
Her thoughtful give-and-take sessions morph naturally from vendor to vendor. With Charlie Koiner, a Silver Spring farmer, she talks up the possibilities of letting a row of his fennel go to flower. Chefs love fennel pollen, she says; once they find out you've got it, they'll find you. You'll earn more than by just selling the bulbs.
"I'm trying so hard to love lovage," she says to another grower who has some of the celery-flavored plants on display. The farmer tells her its stems are hollow and suggests using them as straws for bloody marys.
"I always learn something new," she says. At each stop, she dispenses praise and appreciation.
It's quickly evident that this is classic Odessa: under the radar. "Yes, I like it that way," Piper says. "It's been nice to stay put and get the patterns and rhythms of daily life back. I glory in being able to cook at home, to take some of the things I learned as a chef and apply them."
Piper always has some R&D underway, learning to grow herbs and edible flowers within the confines of her small 18th-floor balcony and then determining how to use them. Back at the apartment after an excursion to the Takoma market on Sunday, she frets over the porch's hot southern exposure.
There are a few yellowed leaves; otherwise, her beloved anise hyssop and the basils, marigolds, geraniums, oregano, thyme, mint, chives and flowering fennel look happy. A few plants are headed for "the nice lady at the end of the market row," to help spread the gospel.
Piper unpacks what she has bought: prized black currants, fresh chevre, arugula and sorrel that will stand in for the butterhead lettuce she had hoped to find, and some of the herbs she already has on hand. "I love herb cookery so much. I just have to buy a lot to encourage what the farmers do and to supplement my little dysfunctional gallery," she says.
As Theise reads the Sunday papers, Piper dons an apron and her signature scarf-tied-as-headband to prep for the recipes she is sharing. It may be ironic that her husband prefers to eat only one meal a day. She's not much of a midday eater but starts her mornings with plain yogurt, fruit and granola.
"She's a much better cook than any man deserves, and we eat like people who ought to get a lot more exercise than I personally do," Theise says.
Not everything she makes for him passes muster. A sour-cherry sauce served with pork recently to Theise and his 21-year-old son, Max, was a bust, Theise says. She has given up the way she used to make vinaigrettes.
Their circa-1970s kitchen with its almond-colored stove and refrigerator seems criminally lacking for someone so talented. Piper says she has made her peace with it since coming to live here in 2006; it's in a condominium with a glorious, tree-lined view and enough space to house 700 bottles of Theise's wine collection.
She willingly opens fridge and freezer for review, each a testament to good eating and resourcefulness. Ripe berries that might otherwise mold in a day or two are popped into her freezer's "potluck bag," from whence slurries for lacquering duck and interesting fruit crisps spring year-round. Cold red currants are kept on hand to be dragged through sugar and popped on top of ice cream desserts. Whole birds have been broken down into stocks and the makings of schnitzel.
"I put things away when they're plentiful and in season, so I can cook with them in the leaner winter months," Piper says. "There's no secret to it."
Pulling from a batch of cheese gougeres she had frozen, Piper composes canapes by filling the just-rewarmed puffs with a special lemon vinaigrette and a lightly dressed herb salad. A single, lacy cluster of fennel blossoms serves as garnish.
She crafts lacy Parmesan tuile cups using a "dumbed-down" toaster oven and uses the same herbs to create a fruity salad that will sit inside them, adding raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and flower petals. She pushes some berries through a strainer to make a gastrique that, when poured on the plate, becomes an impeccable wine-dark base for the presentation.
In minutes, she also cuts watermelon slices into bite-size diamonds that she tops with strips of the anise hyssop and a dab of chevre mixed with creme fraiche and lavender.
Easy enough for anyone to make, yet so distinctly Odessa.
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