Heritage

www.em-i-lis.com

One of the items on my Christmas list that I was most excited to receive was Heritage, the cookbook by Charleston chef, Sean Brock, that was released late last fall. I've eaten at both Husk and McCrady's, two of Brock's restaurants, and really loved them both. As I've come to learn more about Brock himself, I've developed an even greater respect for him as a cook but also as a seriously knowledgeable, regional food historian working to preserve the culinary traditions and ingredients native to the part of the American Southeast that runs from southwest Virginia through South Carolina.

Heritage is a beautifully rendered labor of love. The strains of personal narrative, farmer biography and food history are as engaging as the photographs which, though frequently highly stylized, seem to both entice the palate and make me feel confident that I, too, could cook the recipes. Included are some of the very dishes I enjoyed in Charleston. Heritage is also quite educational, and I have spent several nights curled up in bed with it, becoming more familiar with many of the ingredients I tasted in Brock's restaurants and in the greater Charleston area.

Brock's book suggests a number of specific corn, wheat and seed ingredients, and continuously recommends sourcing those items from Anson Mills. So after a recent night spent in bed with Heritage, I placed an order from Anson Mills, a farm/mill committed to reviving and growing new-crop heirloom grains, legumes, and oil seeds and then cold-milling them to order. If you are committed to the food world at all, you've probably come across Anson Mills' grits which are most definitely the "grit of choice" for serious chefs and grits-lovers.

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Founded by Glenn Roberts in 1998, Anson Mills has also been instrumental in resuscitating -indeed saving- Carolina Gold rice and Benne seeds (among others), two critical Antebellum-era crops. Brock is hugely in favor of that effort. I love the synergy of the Anson Mills-Brock relationship so was happy to direct order for both support and authenticity's sake.

I was particularly jazzed about the bags of Benne seeds I ordered. Benne, a West African ancestor to today's distant cousin, sesame, is closely related to okra and was grown as a subsistence crop in the 1800s. Because it's difficult to harvest, it ultimately lost its place as a heralded ingredient and crop. I first heard of benne when I tasted it, also for the first time, at The Ordinary (a fab seafood hall with magnificent ambiance) in Charleston. If you threatened me with everything you've got, I couldn't tell you what I ordered that contained benne seeds* -because really, oysters!- but with the bartender (because really, sitting at the bar! see A, B) we talked about benne and the unbelievable depth and nuttiness it imparts to Lowcountry food.

*Ok, because I blogged about that meal, I see that in fact I ordered black roux gumbo which was black because of the benne. #somanyreasonstoblog

Few grow it these days, but Anson Mills does, and as my mouth was watering over multiple recipes containing benne seeds and/or bennecake flour, it was clear that both would be an integral part of my order.

Today, before I knew that my A.M. shipment would be arriving, I headed to Capitol Hill to deliver a meal to a couple with a new baby girl -auguri! I keep quitting catering and then not. Bygones. Now I quit for real. Anyway, because I was so.far.downtown., I decided to make a stop at Union Market on the way home because I wanted to replenish my stock of Frantoio's marvelously peppery olive oil that I'd bought there last April. Sadly, that place seems to have left the premises, but I did discover two terrific meat stalls with really specialized cured meats and cuts all made from happy, humanely raised and slaughtered animals.

I admit to seriously loving short ribs so made a beeline for those at the first, Harvey's, but then and there, y'all!, the renowned BENTON'S bacon (from Tennessee; Brock calls for this very bacon in Heritage). Plus some other skin-on bacon from Pennsylvania. I immediately bought two pounds of Roseda Farm's short ribs and a pound of each type of bacon. The smokiness is incredible; were it visible, it'd be a large, plumey cloud of eye-closing, mouth-watering goodness.

www.em-i-lis.com

www.em-i-lis.com

Once home, I found and gleefully opened my box from Anson Mills, and really, everything came together. Soon enough I'll make the oyster-benne stew, and I'll let you know how it is, but tonight I used the short ribs and some of the Pennsylvania bacon to make an unctuous, five-hour stew that we will most definitely savor tomorrow night.

Food days such as these are really something. Love!

An excellent review of Heritagecan be found here.

Charleston, Day 2: feeling happy and fat

Do you know one reason I love going on trips to vibrant cities? Invariably you walk. A lot. Everywhere maybe; we sure are. This pedi-motion lifestyle is one of the things I miss most sincerely about life in New York- exercise and seeing your city from a foot-based vantage point are built in to a life there, and really, it adds so much. I didn't do much today beyond eat and walk, and what a glorious day it was. Blue skies, a shining sun, sales at almost every store!, great food in abundance. We finally left our room around 10:30am and headed to Black Tap, a fantastic coffee house in a residential/college neighborhood that really reminded me of New Orleans. Coffee-elitist alert: I don't usually preference Counter Culture joe, but my latte and T's cappuccino at Black Tap were both superb. Creamy, coffee, not a hint of sour...bellissimo! Afterwards, we meandered our way southeast to lunch at Husk, Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurant in America award recipient in 2011. It did not disappoint. As we're on vacation, T and I decided to share a Fire in the Orchard, an Old Fashioned'ish cocktail comprised of rye, smoked apple cider, Applejack, bitters, pickled jalapeño and muddled sugar; the booziness factor was off the charts, but it was quite good, lasted throughout the entire meal and paired wonderfully with our dishes, many of which contained a smoked element or two. We also ordered a sweet tea each, the taste of which immediately jolted me back to my Mimi's kitchen in Toccoa, GA, the tiny town in which my Dad grew up.

We shared an order of wood-grilled Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes with a bacon crumble on top (insane perfection) as well as an arugula salad with beets, blue and pecan granola, T then went with the catfish BLT and I opted for the shrimp and grits. Holy shit on this bowl of shrimp and grits. Even T, an avowed grits-skeptic and generalized sweet pepper-hater, was like "good god, that is insanely good." I couldn't finish anything but was thrilled to simply taste such a panoply of great food.

The fact that all this merely constituted lunch gave me even more in the way of possible-shopping-spree glee. I simply must walk, and walk far. Burn, burn, burn so as to be ready for dinner at F.I.G., Food Is Good. T headed back after a while but I just went into store after store, talking to folks, musing over wares, utterly enjoying my break from my life. Have I mentioned that the sun has shined continuously since our arrival? Good grief.

I finally decided it would be wise to rest just a bit so headed back to the hotel to meet T and clean up. Before I knew it, we were off to F.I.G., early in the hopes of snagging a spot at the bar since we were without reservations for a table. In general, I prefer to eat at the bar -so does T- and we were thrilled to find two open seats when we arrived at the nearly-psychotically early hour of 5:35pm. I have to hand it to FIG though; we were never rushed, had multiple drinks and a wonderfully drawn-out meal and left perfectly happy, satisfied and full. This was not a spot in which I'd dare take pictures but here's what we had and swooned over: house-made pappardelle with chicken confit (unbelievable), ricotta gnocchi with farm lamb bolognese (I didn't taste the lamb but the ricotta were other-worldly), roasted carrots with fennel pollen, farro picolo with broccoli and parmesan (possibly the second best item), sea bass crudo with cucumber, grapefruit and kumquat (insane!), and for T only, pig confit in a mustard-pork jus. His carrot puree could bring you to tears. In the middle, I decided I must have a slice of the meyer lemon tart that graced FIG's dessert menu, so had pretty much all of my veggies boxed in order to save room. Good call!

As I want to get to Downton watching, I won't regale you now with descriptions of our bar-mates: the v-neck wearing poser, his fist-bumping girl-toy, the fleshy-faced mean banker guy in Buddy Holly glasses or the lass who appeared to be his wife. But tomorrow yes, because it's all just too much and too good.