In 1998 Glenn Roberts, a Charleston-based historic
restoration consultant and thirty-year veteran of restaurant
and hotel concept design, steered his career down a radical path.
He sold his worldly possessions and rented a big metal warehouse
behind a car wash in Columbia, South Carolina. He bought 4 native
granite mills and 40 chest freezers.
Glenn's plan was ambitious, some might say mad:
he intended to grow, harvest and mill near-extinct varieties
of heirloom corn, rice, and wheat organically, and re-create
ingredients that were in the Southern larder before the Civil
War. Grits, cornmeal, Carolina Gold rice, graham and biscuit
flour, milled fresh for the table daily, had helped create a
celebrated regional cuisine--America's first cuisine, the Carolina
Rice Kitchen.
The cuisine was gone, the ingredients that inspired
it no longer available. You might ask why anyone cared.
Glenn cared for a lot of reasons. He cared because
the dishes his mother described during her girlhood in Aiken,
South Carolina could no longer be prepared. He cared because
each time he was asked to create a period dinner for an historic
project the ingredients weren't around. He cared because local
growers lacked the experience to grow old varieties. He cared
because he knew this food had been exceptional.
It began with grits. In 1995 Glenn explored rural
back roads looking for the famous white Carolina mill corn noted
in antebellum plantation inventories and recipes. The corn was
revered for its high mineral and floral characteristics, and
its creamy mouthfeel. He found this corn in a bootlegger's field
near Dillon, South Carolina in 1997, and planted and harvested
his own first crop of 30 acres in 1998. Known as "Carolina
Gourdseed White," the single-family hand-select dated back
to the late 1600's. Gourdseed is a classic Southern dent corn,
soft and easy to mill.
The discovery of Carolina Gourdseed White--and
other nearly extinct varieties of Southern mill corn--fueled
Glenn's efforts to preserve nutrition and flavor in heirloom
corn. He knew the corn would have to be milled as carefully as
it was grown.
Glenn returned to historic documents. He read about an heirloom
that had been bred to blow down in late fall for hand harvest
under snow in deep winter. The corn, an 1850 yellow dent of Appalachian
provenance called "John Haulk," was known to have made
the "finest corn bread and mush." The fact that it
was milled in freezing temperatures after full field ripening
and drying was puzzling until Glenn froze and milled his own
Gourdseed White. The resulting flavors were stunning. With this
experiment Glenn "rediscovered" cold milling. In so
doing, he found a way to offset the heat damage grains experience
during milling, as well as ideal storage for seed corn-the freezer.
By 2000 Glenn had ten varieties of Southern dent heirlooms in
the ground and was milling grits for chefs in Georgia and the
Carolinas. Word got around. A handful of ingredient-conscious
chefs across the country--Thomas Keller in Calfornia, Charlie
Trotter in Chicago, Tom Colicchio in Manhattan, Ann Cashon in
Washington DC, and Jodi Adams in Boston--began to use Anson Mills
products and promote them vigorously to their colleagues. The
circle widened.
In 2001, sustained by the success of Anson Mills' early efforts,
Glenn took on production of certified organic Carolina Gold rice
and a "Thirteen Colony" wheat called Red May. Both
are currently in full production. In addition to its collection
of native heirloom grains Anson Mills grows Japanese buckwheat,
French oats and Italian farro. Each produces products of exquisite
flavor and texture.
To date Anson Mills has provided grants to resuscitate roughly
a dozen types of threatened antebellum mill corn, and has offered
its research growers heirloom seed, seed selection expertise
and management advice. Glenn works with thirty organic growers
in six states.
Finding growers who are prepared to withstand the rigor of organic
certification, and to make peace with the lower yields and higher
demands of heirloom grains is no easy task. Glenn is indebted
to the integrity of the seeds and the fortitude of his growers.
He knows there is much left to do. |
