It Begins In The Dirt: On The Great Importance Of Home Gardening
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Today is officially Sean Brock Day at Food Republic. Brock is no stranger to us, and we like it that way. He's one of the most-passionate culinary ambassadors for the American South, particularly his beloved Lowcountry (the coastal region of South Carolina). He's also one of the nicest guys you could share a bottle of Pappy with (and he's usually buying). Today marks the release of his first cookbook, Heritage. Here's an excerpt of great importance:
A garden is a magical place. I still remember my grandmother's: the long rows of potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, and corn; the hot dusty soil; and the smell of summer rain. I grew up there, wandering through the warm dirt and reveling in intoxicating smells. I remember my initial amazement when I learned that potatoes came from under the ground. I spent the harvest carving into just-dug potatoes with a pocketknife, drinking up the truffled aroma of the moist tubers mixed with earth and eating them raw, straight from the field.
My mom tells everyone that I teethed on rhubarb, saving her a bunch of money on pacifiers, and I think it's fair to say that my experiences within the garden led to my becoming a chef. A vibrant garden is a social space, one that requires a lot of work, both in the dirt and after the harvest. My family used to sit out under an old walnut tree in the backyard, telling family stories as we shaved cabbage into a crock to make my grandmother's mixed pickles. It was a Southern version of kimchi, with a bit less spice but all of the same love. We'd work all summer to grow cabbage, corn, and snap beans, then salt them in crocks and store them in the basement to ferment; or we'd string up wild goose beans with a needle and thread and dry them into "leather britches" outside on the porch. The beans shrink up and become super-intense in flavor after they're dried, and when you cook them they're transformed—it's like eating meat. I can remember sitting around a big table as a kid, stringing them as a communal exercise. And although I hated the tedious work then of picking long rows and preparing the beans for cooking or canning, I now realize what a bonding experience it was for my family, and I am saddened that so many people have lost that common thread.
The garden is an integral part of McCrady's and Husk. Years ago, I experimented with leasing a plot of land on the barrier island of Wadmalaw that sits just south of Charleston, planting just about every seed that I could find. My first attempts were complete failures. I knew so little and I lost whole crops to disease (not to mention the digging of my pug, Yuzu). Over time, I learned a lot about the land, its disease environment and climate, and the connection of those things to the way people eat. These are things that I could never learn in a restaurant kitchen. Instead of hanging out with other chefs, we seek out local farmers, and this brings our whole team closer to the food with which we work. The kitchen is transformed by an understanding of the function of the garden.
I take the staff with me to these gardens. Servers and kitchen staff at McCrady's have worked the fields, and together we have all gained a better understanding and appreciation of what it truly means to eat in Charleston. Your outlook changes when you grow something from seed to stalk. You create ownership and a sense of pride and accomplishment. You start to think more deeply about the process of food itself (I briefly toyed with preparing "raw foods," loath to manipulate such a wonderful thing as nature). I find that the connection between table and dirt runs through a farmer and his or her garden just as much as any chef's inspiration.
In many places across the country, our heritage is threatened. In the Lowcountry, crops like heirloom benne, Sea Island rice peas, and Choppee okra are almost impossible to find now unless you grow them yourself. And yet prior to the twentieth century, they were common staples, available to all. Over the last few decades, a transition to large-scale commercial agriculture has occurred, one that values disease resistance and plant yields over flavor and timeworn tradition. This has changed the way people eat, even in a place so steeped in history as Charleston.
So my aims are twofold: to help bring the small local farmer back to prominence by respecting the work of local growers and to encourage farmers to reach back beyond the hybrid varieties, wasteful practices, and chemical inputs that have transformed agriculture (and the taste of food) over the last century. Only by reclaiming the flavors unique to Charleston or Nashville, or any locale, can we begin to move forward. Otherwise, no one will even know what's missing, and we will have lost forever a tradition that transcends the mere practice of producing food. Authentic food must engage its geographic culture—it must reflect a way of life.
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