Green Goddess

Finding vegetable nirvana
with Annie Somerville – by Ethel Hammer

As a young woman, Annie Somerville looked for transcendence in Zen Buddhism and ultimately found it among the vegetables, fruits, nuts, cheeses and oils in her kitchen at San Francisco’s famed Greens restaurant. Life’s richness energizes this celebrated chef, whether she is addressing a simple navel orange or expressing the essence of ruffled kale.

How did a girl studying in Arcata get to the Zen Center in San Francisco?
I was rather unfocused in my early years. I was going to Humboldt State, in Arcata, Calif., in the early 1970s, majoring in liberal arts. I lived in a small Zen Buddhist household where we meditated and ate vegetarian meals. It was a time of environmental activism, with lots of pot, beer, and wild college antics, in which I did not participate. I was living the quiet life of a Buddhist college student, but I found that the quiet life was not suited to my nature. I love being busy, love to move around, and am not particularly contemplative. But back then I was interested in Zen practice. So I went to San Francisco, joined the Zen Center and lived at Tassajara, a Zen Buddhist monastery, for three years.

You lived in a monastery?
Well, I lived a kind of California monastic existence. In the three years I was there, we had a major forest fire, a devastating flood, followed by a fire in our meditation hall and food storage area. Ultimately, I came to head the kitchen at Tassajara. In 1989, after I left and became the chef at Greens, we experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake. So, I like to say I have lived through earthquakes, floods and fires. Suzuki Roshi, the founding teacher at Zen Center, emphasized work-practice and taught that there was no separation between meditation and everyday life. The idea is to bring that calm place found in a meditative setting into our work life through attention to detail, and in being focused on what’s right in front of you so there’s no room for ego, blame or anger. Every day at Greens is a good day, an idea that is almost like a phrase from a Zen teacher. 

Is Greens run by Zen practitioners?
When Greens was first opened, everyone was part of the Zen Center, which was organized like a church with three arms: the monastery at Tassajara; Green Gulch Farm (an organic farm); and the Zen Center in San Francisco. Everyone rotated jobs and worked at all three places. Greens started as a community of people who worked together and lived together, serving the public. Greens has evolved since then, but is still owned by the San Francisco Zen Center, though just a few of us are connected to Zen Center.  

What would surprise people about you?
I’m a total outdoors nut. I hike, swim in the San Francisco Bay, ride my bike and love cooking at high elevations. And I love to go back packing with my husband at 10,000 feet in the Eastern Sierra Mountains. Some people think I’m a food purist or a health nut. I don’t deny it, but I’m not 100 percent vegetarian. Occasionally I eat a little chicken or fish. I think it’s fine to be a vegetarian or “a flexitarian”—to give yourself a little leeway. But I never crave a hamburger. I love vegetables. I love beautiful cheese.

Is it true that you don’t use the word vegetarian at Greens?
We only use it on the cookbooks. We’re just doing it; we don’t have to proselytize. At Greens, we don’t look for meat substitutes. We feature seasonal cooking of ingredients at their best. We cook whatever farmers are growing. Every element in a dish is strong and expressive.

So let’s talk about greens.
There are all the bitter greens, radicchio, escarole, frisée and chicory. And puntarella, a super bitter green, which is traditionally served with anchovies or sardines, but we grill it and serve it in a salad. It’s really delicious. Then, there are the endives and red endigia, which is really great, looks beautiful and tastes delicious. You can roast it or grill it. Then, there are the winter chards, all sorts of kales, including red Russian kale with reddish and green fingerlike tips, and lacinato kale—also called dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale—and green kale and purple kale. Then, there are the chards like rainbow chard. You tear off the stems and sauté them first, then add the leaves later. I love chard, kale and beet greens. We are so fortunate to be in the Bay Area, where we have so many microclimates within 150 miles and a culture of supportive people who are interested in seasonally grown food.

Tell us about your rosemary crêpes with goat cheese and wilted greens.
You can use anything: rainbow chard, leeks, savoy spinach with its curly leaves ($23.50, see recipe database). I have a terrible time following my recipes: I think, ‘why did I do that? I think I’ll do that instead!’ The crêpe batter has fresh rosemary. With crêpes, I like a rich sauce. The herb cream is steeped in fresh oregano, thyme and a bay leaf, and seasoned with Dijon.   

If I make a Meyer lemon cream, I reduce the cream, which has been steeped with lemon rind. I love the fragrance and sweetness of Meyer lemons. 

What is your best advice to chefs hoping to add more vegetarian dishes to their menus?
Be connected to some local farmers and farmers markets. Most chefs know that if you’re using fresh ingredients, you don’t have to do a lot. If you shop at the farmers market, you’ll get the early cherries, then come the great big Bing cherries, then come apricots and stone fruits. It’s a gradual progression of the seasons, everything coming to fruition in its own time. Now that the days are longer, the rapini bolts, producing a flower so it goes to seed. As soon as you put a chilled soup on the menu, the fog comes in.

I like Michael Pollan’s idea: “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.” If the entire country started eating fresh fruits and vegetables, whole beans and whole grains, we’d be such a healthy nation.