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DISPATCHES
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GLOBETROTTING
36
JULY 2012
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
TERRY MANIER
LOTS OF CHEFS TODAY
sport food
ta oos: inked-on images of sunny-
side-up eggs or pigs diagrammed into
butcher’s cuts. SeanBrock, head chef
at the celebrated restaurants Husk
and McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C.,
has an ear of corn. It’s actually part
of a full sleeve of botanical ta oos
on Brock’s left arm that includes
pea shoots, candy-striped beets and
black radishes, but the corn—the
brick-colored, nearly extinct Jimmy
red corn—gets special prominence,
as well it should. It helpedmake him
what he is.
Fiveyears ago, Brock, now34, began
thinking that in order to fully realize
the dishes he grew up eating in Vir-
ginia, hewould have to recovermany
of the thousands of richly flavored
native grain varieties, like Jimmy
red corn and Carolina gold rice, that
once thrived
in fields and
kitchen gar -
dens across the
South, but then all but disappeared
in thewake of industrial agriculture.
So he decided to grow them him-
self. Brock researched heritage seed
varieties at local heirloom grain mill
Anson Mills, and started cultivating
a few, like Sea Island white-flint
corn, on a small farm plot in nearby
McClellanville. He cookedwith them
too, of course, crafting
GOING
TO SEED
Hownearly extinct
grains helped propel
a next-generation
soul food chef to the
big time
BY LEAH KOENIG
FOOD & DRINK
CORN BEEF
Chef Sean
Brock has a bone to
pick about preserving
heritage grains.