34 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 8-14, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com FACE TO FACE Pat Hopper was born and raised in coal mining country in Pennsylvania, attended school in New York and then college in Florida. In short: She didn’t come from artichoke country. But when her husband was stationed at Fort Ord, she moved with him and in 1982 started looking for a job. She saw a position advertised to work for the California Artichoke Advisory Board. “I thought, ‘I can do this job, but what’s an artichoke?’” she recalls. Artichoke ignorance aside, she landed the job and began what became a 40-year career in the world of artichokes, earning her the nickname “queen of the artichoke.” In 1989, Hopper left the board to go work for artichoke grower Ocean Mist Farms, at the time called the California Artichoke and Vegetable Corporation. (“I said, ‘this is not a good marketing name,’” she says.) After another 10 years she returned to her job at the advisory board so she would have more flexibility to travel abroad. Now 83 and about three years retired, she’s still a fan of artichokes and will be at the Artichoke Festival this weekend stumping on behalf of her favorite vegetable, doing cooking demonstrations. (She’s been part of the festival since 1984.) Ask Hopper about artichokes; if you ask her to tell you the story of how she landed a career in artichokes, she will downplay everything. As she puts it (wrongly, one could argue): “It’s sort of a dull story, we should probably talk about artichokes.” Weekly: So you didn’t know about artichokes but you got a job on the California Artichoke Advisory Board. How did that happen? Hopper: There was a lot of action going on with the feminists. I thought, it’s going to be a bunch of men asking me questions and they are not going to ask me anything they wouldn’t ask a man, so they won’t ask me about cooking artichokes. They decided to interview me and sure enough, there were 13 men looking at me. I just went for it. I told them I would market artichokes as best I could, try to get onto television and get some good press out there. And I was going to work cheap, I think that’s why they hired me. I came into the business and learned very quickly, I had to. Part of your role was education for produce managers in grocery stores and for consumers, yet you arrived not having a clue how to cook an artichoke. Everything was fine until one day a reporter looked at me and said, “How do you cook artichokes?” I said, artichokes are easy to cook. All you have to do—I don’t think you can print this—is cut their pricks off. That was my baptism of interviewing. Ever since then, I’ve been able to control myself and get on with it. You seem to genuinely believe artichokes are the best vegetable ever. You can have fun with artichokes. They are a phenomenal thing because of their nutritional value, and they have a little panache; there’s something mysterious about them. This was more fun than anything I’ve been involved with. Growers, they’re real gamblers—they’re exciting. You love world travel. Where have you been? Where haven’t I? In the South Pacific—Fiji, Tahiti; Asia—Vietnam; Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, India; China three times; South America; Central America; Egypt, Jordan and Israel; all of Europe; Russia, when you could do Russia. Now that you’re retired, do you still eat a lot of artichokes? Yes, but not as much, because I have to buy them. What’s your preparation? Some artichokes [in the store] look awful, because they’re not cared for along the way. They are out there in trucks and warehouses for sometimes two weeks, then dumped on the shelf and treated like potatoes—they should have humidity of 99 percent. I start by cutting the stem, like a flower, and putting them in water—let it rehydrate and plump up for two to three hours. I cut its pointy head off, so it’ll stand upside down, and wrap them in plastic wrap while wet from their bath. Then nuke them, one at a time, usually seven minutes. What about a dip? The flavor is so good, you don’t want to mess with putting mayonnaise and stuff on it. I like to eat it naked. Artichoke Festival runs 10am-6pm Saturday, June 10 and 10am-5pm Sunday, June 11. Monterey County Fair & Event Center, 2004 Fairground Road, Monterey. $20/ general admission; $10/children. artichoke.org. Choked Up The “queen of the artichoke” reflects on a career in marketing the thistle that put Castroville on the map. By Sara Rubin Pat Hopper stumbled into marketing artichokes as a career path, and fell in love. “It’s just a fun veggie—unlike rutabaga,” she says. “It’s a special thing.” NIK BLASKOVICH
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==