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The Cook Sisters

Culinary Educators

By Brandie Bland

The Cook sisters—Adrienne Cook and Danielle Cook Navidi—are a cooking duo who advocate for eating locally and seasonally. They started cooking together as part of a collaboration with the U.S. Botanic Garden and spend their time doing cooking demonstrations around the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Outside of their work together, Danielle Cook Navidi runs her business, Happily Hungry, a nutrition program that works with young cancer patients and survivors. In 2003, Adrienne Cook retired from her gardening column at the Washington Post and now spends time curating recipes for the “Cook Sisters” programs with the fruits and veggies she grows in her garden.

Tell us about your background: Where did you grow up, what was it like growing up together, what was your family like, did you both always do things together? Adrienne Cook (AC): There were seven of us, so Danielle and I didn’t grow up together. We’re 14 years apart, so I was 17 and headed to college and she was only 3. We didn’t get to know each other as siblings until Danielle became an adult. There were no stories of us sharing cooking experiences growing up. What we shared was a mother who loved to cook. And we both have great memories of that. I think a lot of what we do today comes from that experience of being with her in the kitchen. Danielle Cook Navidi (DCN): Our parents were expats and left the United States to go overseas. My dad was a war correspondent stationed abroad, so we moved around Europe a lot, and all seven kids were born in different parts of Europe. Adrienne’s experience growing up was, they moved houses and countries a fair amount, but by the time I came along, my mother had gotten really tired of packing up and moving every two years, so they settled in France. My entire upbringing was in France, whereas Adrienne lived in France for a while, England for a while, and Germany.

How did you become interested in cooking and gardening? AC: We grew up that way partially because when I was growing up, there were no supermarkets in France. We really did have to rely on seasonal cooking because you just couldn’t go to a supermarket and buy fresh apples in the middle of wintertime. It was definitely part of the DNA of how we grew up out of necessity and we still practice that today as much as we can. DCN: Because of our upbringing in Europe, I think we developed a real love of food, particularly through our mom, who was very open and eager to learn cuisines wherever we lived. During the France years, I’d go to the market with my mother and she would go two or three times a week. I learned to understand the value of seasonal foods and eating seasonally, and that’s something that Adrian and I have always been doing and is a major point to our program.

What is your favorite cuisine to cook? What is your favorite thing to grow? AC: What I love to do is to grab something out of the garden, bring it in, and look at a pot and decide what I’m going to do right then and there with it. I love to just simply take very fresh things right out of the garden. It’s my favorite way to cook because it’s ready. It’s easy. You don’t have to go shopping for anything and it’s always really primo when you do that. You know you’re getting the best vegetables at their absolute prime and their freshest. DCN: We keep abreast of what is going on out there just because we enjoy it so much. This is a big part of our daily interest of reading blogs and flipping through magazines, and just being really clued into who’s coming onto the scene. There isn’t any one particular style of cuisine that we could relate to that is our niche. I think we’ve become better cooks because of the general interest we have in global cuisines. There isn’t a dish that I fall back on ever because I do so much that is seasonally driven.

Tell us about your work together? AC: I wrote a garden column for the Washington Post for many years and so I was somewhat in demand at different venues. Brookside Gardens was one of my primary clients early on, and then I also did a show on Maryland community television. I had fairly consistent appearances doing gardening demos at different places and venues around DC, and someone asked: Would you be willing to do a cooking demo? I said okay and I realized right away that

doing it by yourself is a huge amount of work, so I started looking around for a partner and asked Danielle to come help me, and it just evolved. Then the U.S. Botanic Garden took us on twice a month for 10 months and we were doing gardening clubs and events at different venues around the city. We went from doing a lot of gardening demos, which is a lot harder because you have to have a garden—you can’t just take it somewhere—to the two of us cooking. It worked out really well and I wrote about it for the Post also.

What has been the most challenging and most rewarding thing about working together? AC: I can’t think of any real challenges. It’s hard work. I mean, we’re hauling stuff all over the place. And this is one of the things Danielle is so good at. She’s gotten this down to an absolute science of being able to load the car and knowing exactly what she needs for everything. And she’s always got everything ready. That’s a big challenge for me as I’m always forgetting something, but she usually has whatever I forgot in her load. Working together has been wonderful. We fight a lot, we laugh a lot, and she bosses me around. And I think the audience kind of enjoys that interaction. DCN: I think personality-wise, we click and work extremely well together in the kitchen. We have a sixth sense of what needs to happen and over the years, we’ve gotten really good at anticipating what we’ll need. We spent a lot of time preparing for our presentations. We will get on the phone and sometimes it’ll be two-hour conversations of battling back and forth ideas, researching, and pulling up old recipes. One of the things that Adrienne is so fabulous at is she knows her garden. She knows the seasons and what we’re going to be able to get hold of in markets. I’ve gotten better at understanding that because we’ve worked together for so many years, but she’s really been the lead on selecting topics.

Do you have an influence or hero that inspired you to do the work you do? AC: My mother has been an inspiration for me and the roots of what we do come out of the experiences we had with her for me. It’s like the reference point. I would say that in terms of enduring influencers, people like my mother. Julia Child is another one. She actually overlapped with my parents while they were in France. They were doing some similar work, although my parents were never spies, at least as far as we knew. She was a big influence because I understood French cooking and so I was able to use what she wrote and apply it to what was available here in the United States. DCN: I would have to agree with that, I think Julia Child was definitely an early influencer. When I first used Julia Child’s cookbook, it felt like our mother was actually talking to me. I think if Mom had taken a career in that direction, those would have been the kinds of books she would have produced or written.

How do you like to spend your free time? AC: You’d probably find us shopping for the garden or the kitchen. DCN: The garden and the kitchen take up a lot time and those are two hobbies we enjoy doing. I like to travel and try to get back to France whenever I can.

What are your favorite places to buy and eat locally? AC: The variety of stuff at farmer’s markets in DC and Takoma Park always amazes me because I can’t possibly grow all of it in my little garden. Even with a particular vegetable, the range of colors and varieties that you can find at a farmer’s market is more vast than anything you can grow yourself, even if you’ve got a big community garden. Farmer’s markets are my go-to place if I have a couple of hours to kill and I want to really experience something. DCN: I can’t give you the name of a restaurant that I’ve been to because I don’t eat out that much. I’m always touting for people to go visit local farmer’s markets. I think there’s a lot to learn just by meandering through the Dupont Circle market on a Sunday morning. So many farmer’s markets have popped up across the DC that you can certainly get out and visit one, and pick up some vegetables that you don’t recognize and figure out what you’re going to do with them.

What cooking or gardening tips or tricks do you have for our readers and their kitchens or gardens? AC: For gardening, I would say go small. Have a small plot and if you can’t grow something one year, grow it the following year. You only need one tomato plant; you don’t need a second one to pollinate it. You only need one square foot for beans where you can plant them intensely and pick what’s there. If you decide you’re going to do zucchini, plant them somewhere outside the garden, because they’ll take over the entire plot otherwise. Don’t just start small; stay small. You’ll enjoy it much more. DCN: I like the mantra “If you can taste, you can cook.” Often, I’ll get the question, How do I make a recipe really pop? I believe the success of making a recipe really come together is to do the balancing act of having the right sweet, sour, salty, and creamy. I’ve often described it as like four legs of a chair. Having the right fat, which also gives you the creamy component—it can be an oil, an actual cream, or butter. The salt obviously being salt itself or a substitute, which would be herbs or some lemon. Citrus, vinegar, or lemon adds the acidity or sourness. And then the sweetness, which is not added sugar because there’s natural sweetness that comes from a lot of the vegetables and fruits that you’re working with. If you need to add in sweetness, it can come from something like a touch of maple syrup in tomato soup. There’s no reason that food or a recipe should come out flat. Those four components are what is going to make you a good cook.

How can our readers get in contact with you? The “Contact us” form on our website is the best way to reach us. Our website is cook-sisters.com. o

Brandie Bland is a senior multi-platform journalism major in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener.