By Denise DiFulco
Chef Sean Brock collects seeds the way a kid collects baseball cards. Their value lies within: Those tiny vessels safeguard the South’s culinary past — the heritage vegetables, beans and grains that define the region’s cuisine. By reclaiming local varieties of those ingredients — including some that were thought to be extinct — Brock is reinventing authentic Southern cooking literally from the ground up. A James Beard Award winner, Brock grows the crops on his own 1.5-acre parcel, then serves up the bounty at McCrady’s and Husk, his Charleston, South Carolina, restaurants. Pursuing purity to that extreme is a challenge, but its reward has been an impressive following for Brock’s upscale yet down-home meals.
Fresh Perspectives: How did you become interested in resurrecting crops threatened with extinction?
Sean Brock: I’ve become interested in the original, land-raised forms of these plants because that’s what they’re supposed to taste like. We’ve got a long, long road ahead of us to get our food system back to where it should be, and in order to do that, you have to resurrect these crops so that people can see them, smell them and taste them.
What brought about your awareness?
It started with corn. My first seed-saving project was a variety of corn called Jimmy Red. When you cook these grits, the best way to describe it is like when you take a skillet of corn bread out of the oven and when you first crack it open with all that butter on the inside — that first sort of aroma that hits your nose. It’s an unmistakable aroma as a Southerner. And that’s what these grits tasted like. That’s because it was a beautiful variety of corn and it was milled properly and cooked properly.
Have there been any challenges for you bringing back old varieties of vegetables and grains?
Most definitely. For the most part, everything does pretty well here. But we’ve had things fail. There are some things that need nurturing, and if you can’t be there every single day to nurture them, then they’re not going to do well and they’re going to disappear. That’s half the reason people don’t want to grow these products. Because if you look at real okra — the stuff that’s not genetically engineered — if you don’t pick it every single day, it’s inedible. It’s just the nature of the plant.
How do you develop a menu from those ingredients?
We have a very strict creative process. We call it the PIE theory. It starts with Products. Then there’s Inspiration or Ideas. Then there’s Execution. So we’ll start with searching out and finding the most beautiful products. Then, once they are in your hands, they’ll inspire you. That’s where creativity comes in. Then you put the dish together. And you have to realize that these restaurants are busy and you have to execute them properly. Then the editing process starts. We edit it just like you’d edit a movie. We take things away or we sharpen things. We change things so we can produce it for 200 people.
So is it true you have a full-sleeve tattoo of vegetables?
It’s all my favorite vegetables. I have, like, 50 different vegetables. Everything you can imagine. You can probably name a vegetable and it’s on my arm. It started out as something small and grew into something out of control — just like everything I seem to get my hands on. The best way to put it, and it’s as cheesy as hell, is that you wear your heart on your sleeve.
Chef Sean Brock collects seeds the way a kid collects baseball cards. Their value lies within: Those tiny vessels safeguard the South’s culinary past — the heritage vegetables, beans and grains that define the region’s cuisine. By reclaiming local varieties of those ingredients — including some that were thought to be extinct — Brock is reinventing authentic Southern cooking literally from the ground up. A James Beard Award winner, Brock grows the crops on his own 1.5-acre parcel, then serves up the bounty at McCrady’s and Husk, his Charleston, South Carolina, restaurants. Pursuing purity to that extreme is a challenge, but its reward has been an impressive following for Brock’s upscale yet down-home meals.
Fresh Perspectives: How did you become interested in resurrecting crops threatened with extinction?
Sean Brock: I’ve become interested in the original, land-raised forms of these plants because that’s what they’re supposed to taste like. We’ve got a long, long road ahead of us to get our food system back to where it should be, and in order to do that, you have to resurrect these crops so that people can see them, smell them and taste them.
What brought about your awareness?
It started with corn. My first seed-saving project was a variety of corn called Jimmy Red. When you cook these grits, the best way to describe it is like when you take a skillet of corn bread out of the oven and when you first crack it open with all that butter on the inside — that first sort of aroma that hits your nose. It’s an unmistakable aroma as a Southerner. And that’s what these grits tasted like. That’s because it was a beautiful variety of corn and it was milled properly and cooked properly.
Have there been any challenges for you bringing back old varieties of vegetables and grains?
Most definitely. For the most part, everything does pretty well here. But we’ve had things fail. There are some things that need nurturing, and if you can’t be there every single day to nurture them, then they’re not going to do well and they’re going to disappear. That’s half the reason people don’t want to grow these products. Because if you look at real okra — the stuff that’s not genetically engineered — if you don’t pick it every single day, it’s inedible. It’s just the nature of the plant.
How do you develop a menu from those ingredients?
We have a very strict creative process. We call it the PIE theory. It starts with Products. Then there’s Inspiration or Ideas. Then there’s Execution. So we’ll start with searching out and finding the most beautiful products. Then, once they are in your hands, they’ll inspire you. That’s where creativity comes in. Then you put the dish together. And you have to realize that these restaurants are busy and you have to execute them properly. Then the editing process starts. We edit it just like you’d edit a movie. We take things away or we sharpen things. We change things so we can produce it for 200 people.
So is it true you have a full-sleeve tattoo of vegetables?
It’s all my favorite vegetables. I have, like, 50 different vegetables. Everything you can imagine. You can probably name a vegetable and it’s on my arm. It started out as something small and grew into something out of control — just like everything I seem to get my hands on. The best way to put it, and it’s as cheesy as hell, is that you wear your heart on your sleeve.
