Jessica Shields: Around the World to Wildsmith At Home

Written by Bill Kent

Hunt Country native Chef Jessica Shields believes a good meal is more than satisfying — it should tell a story.

When she makes something as simple as pancakes, for example, she thinks back to the Unison farm where she grew up. There, at the age of 6, she discovered that if she made breakfast for her family, she could get out of mucking the stables.

“I grew up eventing and foxhunting, but cooking quickly became my passion,” she shares. 

That passion led her from bussing tables to serving as the line cook at Ashby Inn, and then on to Four & Twenty Blackbirds in Flint Hill, Virginia. She attended The Hill School and by 16 had her own catering business. After high school in Aspen, Colorado, she attended the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. She has opened restaurants, owned and operated D.C.’s most popular food truck, and cooked her way around the world. 

Her latest venture has brought her back to Hunt Country. Wildsmith At Home is an organic, chef-driven, high-end culinary meal delivery service for foodies within a 25-mile radius of Middleburg. The numerous meal plan options focus on local ingredients, come in eco-friendly containers and custom cooler bags, and are delivered bimonthly. Shields is also shipping frozen entrées specially designed to meet the needs of postpartum women, as well as continuing her private catering business for bespoke events and dinner parties. 

“I’m a mother of two,” she says, taking a break inside Upperville’s Trinity Church kitchen, where she does her cooking. “I know all about the misinformation out there about what is expected of new mothers.” Following the birth of her daughter, she received her certification as a postpartum nutritionist. 

Shields’ postpartum meals, as well as the Wildsmith At Home packages that she hand-delivers, are intended to promote healing and provide vital restorative nutrition. She believes that as much as mothers are caring for their newborns, their meals — and the natural world from which their ingredients came — should care for them. “I’m all about approaching this holistically,” she says. 

During her globe-trotting culinary adventures, Shields was inspired by the marketplaces, farmers, fishing boats, street vendors, and numerous chefs who let her taste local delicacies and taught her techniques, as well as the wide range of people she fed. Some were very wealthy. Others were homeless families and children in orphanages.

One of her favorite feasts, though, was closer to home: Ode to the Artist, an art-in-nature-themed dinner she created in collaboration with Kristin Meek at Turtle Dove Farm in Delaplane. Different courses were dedicated to the art of poet Mary Oliver, painter Frida Kahlo, and reggae singer and composer Bob Marley, culminating in a dish featuring chocolate bark resembling tree bark, which was laced with edible soil and moss, meringue mushrooms, edible crystals, and three different chocolate cremeux, finished with a medicinal warm chocolate elixir.

“It was woven together with storytelling, curated playlists, and reflective prompts with each course,” Meek remembers of the dinner for 16. “Every dish carried a narrative and a nod to the artist it honored. We designed two layered tablescapes — one on the outdoor patio and one inside The Abbey — and hosted a cocktail hour staged entirely with antiques from Jessica’s father’s collection, styled to feel like Frida Kahlo’s living room.”

Meek, a longtime friend, calls Shields “a true citizen of the world.” She adds that Shields’ meal delivery service “isn’t just convenient; it’s essential care.”

When asked to conceptualize a menu representing her culinary journey, Shields gave it some thought and, after a few days, emerged from her kitchen with an eight-course feast that, unsurprisingly, tells a story or two.  

It begins with an heirloom tomato galette with lemon herb farm cheese, black sesame crust, and micro arugula topped with a basil vinaigrette. “My mother, Kate Shields, is British and a master gardener. She also showed me how to make pastry with delicious flaky crusts,” Shields shares. “Every year on our farm, we’d have these insane tomato harvests — hundreds of tomatoes every day. Spending time with my mother outdoors, and eating those wonderful tomatoes, made cooking seem a very natural thing to do.”

The second course, seafood and Spanish chorizo cioppino, is about San Francisco. “On my days off from the restaurant, I’d go to farmers markets or down to Fisherman’s Wharf and come back inspired. I’d take all that inspiration into the restaurant and use it when I cooked the family meals.” This dish simmers shellfish and cod in a smoked paprika tomato broth, served with crispy fennel and lemon aioli on grilled sourdough.

Next is a “reimagined” bouillabaisse that is a “nod,” Shields says, to nouvelle cuisine, which she first enjoyed with her father, local antique dealer and Francophile Louis Shields, who took her with him to Europe on buying trips. Some years later, Jessica got a job cooking on a private yacht based in the south of France. This course is similar to one she created while afloat: poached langoustines swim in a saffron broth reduction with sea vegetables, fingerling potato confit, fennel pollen, yuzu crème fraiche, and wildflower oil.

“I lived in Monaco, and I would be picked up in the morning by the client’s private driver and taken to the markets with an unlimited budget,” she recalls. “Then I was driven and shuttled to wherever the yacht might be, where I’d start with a family-style lunch and spend the rest of the day making an eight- to 10-course tasting meal.”

The fourth course, which Shields calls Pura Vida, or “simple life,” describes some of the equatorial flavors she enjoyed as executive chef of a Costa Rican yoga spa. Shields “slept in a tent by a waterfall. I’d go spear fishing and foraging in the jungle and bring it back to an open-air kitchen.”

The catch of the day would be cleaned and filleted, and wrapped in a steamed banana leaf that’s marinated in coconut, ginger, garlic, and lime. “It breathes tropical vitality,” she says. “It honors the local Costa Rican bounty and the awakening that came with nourishing people.”

That awakening was, for Shields, an epiphany. She had discovered her life’s purpose: not merely to prepare food, but to provide a meal that could lead to a spiritual experience.

From there, Shields went to Southeast Asia, where she went on a motorcycle trek through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. “I took cooking classes, explored the markets, and fell in love with the street food culture.” These memories inform her Laotian duck curry, a tamarind red curry of seared duck breast, Thai basil, toasted rice powder, crispy lotus root, fermented chili oil, lychee, and pickled shallots.

After such dizzyingly complicated flavors, Shields offers an intermezzo, “a still point — a return to simplicity.” Her cucumber-lemongrass granita has an herbal aloe gelée, coriander blossom, honeydew pearls, shiso leaf, and an infusion of lemon balm.

The sixth course represents Shields’ fascination and love for vegetables, which she finds far more interesting and challenging than proteins. This, she says, is “risky in that people would expect a protein as the high point. I’m saying that you can meet those expectations, and do even more, with vegetables. To me, this is a painting of what it means to create from the soul, with reverence for color, craft, and care.” Her “garden mosaic” reflects back on her childhood in her mother’s garden, but shows what happens when the child becomes a fully realized adult. The dish uses roasted beets presented as medallions, with a glazed carrot terrine of smoked sunflower seed crema, crispy lentil tuile, fermented tomato leather, charred leek ash, sorrel, and a nasturtium vinaigrette.

“When it comes to desserts, I don’t like to choose between sweet or savory. I’d rather have both,” she says. Her olive oil and citrus parfait is fully vegan, with a roasted apricot puree, rosemary oat crumble, Meyer lemon coconut whip, Maldon salt, and edible flower petals. “This is a mirror of my commitment to nourishing indulgence with integrity.”

To cap off the meal, Shields offers a “a final sip, an elixir of healing.” This cacao and spice wellness tonic uses ceremonial cacao, cinnamon, reishi, maca, cayenne, vanilla bean, sea salt, raw honey, and an oat milk froth.

During her travels through South America, Shields tried cacao prepared as a sacred beverage. The experience made her ask what would happen if more chefs, as well as growers and producers, considered what they were eating as a gift powerful enough to make everything better.

This little drink is “the heart of my philosophy: food as medicine,” she concludes. “This rich and powerful tonic is a closing ritual, a devotion to the body, mind, and continued journey of healing.” ML

Published in the August 2025 issue of Middleburg Life.