Eats Shoots and Leaves
Eva Sommaripa is Boston chefs’ go-to gardener.
- Photo by Carl Tremblay.
Eva Sommaripa wants salads to go naked. No oil. No vinegar, please. “Most people think of salad as a mono-flavor bag from the supermarket,” says Sommaripa, an organic farmer in South Dartmouth. “But a great salad is made up of dozens of varieties of leaves, each with its own flavor. You have to taste each separately. Otherwise, you miss the experience.”
It’s certainly an experience the first time you taste Eva’s Greens, which—depending on the season, the weather, and Sommaripa’s whim—might include bull’s blood beet leaves, goose foot (a cousin of spinach), or purslane, a lemony leaf considered one of the world’s most pervasive weeds. For more than 30 years, Eva’s garden has been a gold mine for city chefs: This summer, Via Matta’s Adam Halberg is using Eva’s nepitella (a.k.a. calaminth), an Italian herb that’s a combination of mint and oregano, to season baby artichokes, while Oleana pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick uses rose petals in a raspberry gratin.
Sommaripa, 65, never intended to become a gardener; she trained as a potter at the Rhode Island School of Design, then worked as an artist in Cambridge. But she spent most weekends in Dartmouth learning to garden from family friends and, from local environmentalist Russ Cohen, the virtues of common, but very edible, weeds. It wasn’t long before her garden was producing more than she could use. So she began selling fresh herbs—basil and arugula were nearly unknown back then—to groceries and local restaurants in the 1970s. “I figured my garden might as well pay for the gas for the commute,” she says.
Today, Sommaripa is best known for her baby pea greens—a breed apart from the tough stems you find in Chinatown—and her taste for utterly wacky plants. (Spruce shoots, anyone? You can try them at Radius where they’re on the seasonal menu.) Whatever you order, one bite will prove that salad packs more punch than you imagined. No dressing required.
>> Eva’s Greens are available in restaurants but are occasionally sold at Formaggio Kitchen, 244 Huron Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-4750; formaggiokitchen.com.
It’s certainly an experience the first time you taste Eva’s Greens, which—depending on the season, the weather, and Sommaripa’s whim—might include bull’s blood beet leaves, goose foot (a cousin of spinach), or purslane, a lemony leaf considered one of the world’s most pervasive weeds. For more than 30 years, Eva’s garden has been a gold mine for city chefs: This summer, Via Matta’s Adam Halberg is using Eva’s nepitella (a.k.a. calaminth), an Italian herb that’s a combination of mint and oregano, to season baby artichokes, while Oleana pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick uses rose petals in a raspberry gratin.
Sommaripa, 65, never intended to become a gardener; she trained as a potter at the Rhode Island School of Design, then worked as an artist in Cambridge. But she spent most weekends in Dartmouth learning to garden from family friends and, from local environmentalist Russ Cohen, the virtues of common, but very edible, weeds. It wasn’t long before her garden was producing more than she could use. So she began selling fresh herbs—basil and arugula were nearly unknown back then—to groceries and local restaurants in the 1970s. “I figured my garden might as well pay for the gas for the commute,” she says.
Today, Sommaripa is best known for her baby pea greens—a breed apart from the tough stems you find in Chinatown—and her taste for utterly wacky plants. (Spruce shoots, anyone? You can try them at Radius where they’re on the seasonal menu.) Whatever you order, one bite will prove that salad packs more punch than you imagined. No dressing required.
>> Eva’s Greens are available in restaurants but are occasionally sold at Formaggio Kitchen, 244 Huron Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-4750; formaggiokitchen.com.
Originally published in Boston magazine, August 2006
