Hulled-to-order Charleston Gold Brown Rice brings a collision of tea, nuttiness, and perfume into your mouth. It offers the performance of its mother, Carolina Gold, and the alluring aromatics of polished Charleston Gold, along with a springy mouthfeel and the superior nutrition of brown rice. When was the last time you enjoyed a whiff of brown rice unsullied by the funk of rancid oils? (Like, probably never.) We’re launching Charleston Gold Brown Rice, our first brown rice available to home cooks, to favor this gem of the Middle East we’ve been working on . . .
Mujadara
Middle Eastern, yes, but the ancient dish of mujadara shares improbable ancestral ties with the colonial Carolina dish of rice, Sea Island peas, and ramps (though southern rice and peas are mere infants in comparison). In this recipe, Charleston Gold Brown Rice and sprouted green lentils mix it up with crispy fried shallots and a cool sash of yogurt. So alive with perfume, flavor, and spry textures, you might fall in love. Especially when you eat it with . . .
Baba Ghanoush
Equal parts silk and smoke, its sweetness balanced by a gentle one-two punch from lemon and garlic, baba ghanoush is winter’s dip, in our opinion. Thank you, eggplant, for being so user friendly! Eat baba on the same fork with mujadara or sweep it up on a crisp, spicy pita chip and be transported to a Mediterranean clime. The pita chips? We made them, too, using bread left over from the phenomenal recipe below.
Pita Bread
Flatbread isn’t noted for its crumb. With a single exception called pizza, flatbread isn’t noted for its crust. In the United States, when it goes by the name pita, flatbread certainly isn’t noted for its flavor. We are thrilled to offer a recipe that pairs the brilliant floral, nutty, and exotic spice flavors of Ancient Emmer Semolina with the suppleness and cushion-soft crumb of our high-performing Pizza Maker’s Flour (Farina di Pizzaiolo ‘00’). This recipe requires nothing more than a mixing bowl, a rolling pin, a pizza stone, and our flours to make pita that knows no peers.
Arancini
With their sizzling-crisp croquette skins and creamy risotto centers secreting bits of scamorza and soppressata (cheese and sausage, folks), these chubby rice balls are dressed to impress. Known as arancini in Italy, fried rice balls were brought to Sicily by the Moors (who were kind enough to drop them off in Spain while they were at it), and have remained stubbornly contemporary to this day. What might surprise you is that arancini also enjoy solid popularity in diners and cafés all over southeastern Texas. We happen to know this because we farm rice in Anahuac, China, Nome, Sour Lake, and Winnie, where every year locals make thousands of rice balls to celebrate harvest at the Texas Rice Festival. The legacy of Texan rice balls is tied to the immigration of Italian rice farmers in the region over a century ago. Our absolute favorite Texan rice balls are stuffed with chili—a quirky crypto-Italian take on traditional arancini filled with meat ragù. But we digress . . .
