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ลำดับตอนที่ #82 : Is this the worlds greatest rice
Rice
is an overlooked culinary
component, often viewed as a necessary, but not particularly flavourful, staple to a meal. It’s
a supporting cast member to the star on the plate, the designated driver of all
things delicious.
But
then there’s Carolina Gold rice – a product so sought after in the 18th and most of the 19th
Centuries, both in North America and in Europe, that it made Charleston, South
Carolina, one of the richest cities in the United States for a time. All those pristine church steeples
pointing heavenward
and those well-preserved
Italianate, Queen Anne, Greek Revival, Georgian and Federal structures flanking the town’s enchanting streets? Those
were all paid for with highly profitable Charleston Gold rice – so named for
the unique rice fields, which turn a gleaming gold when ready to harvest. The
“gold” in Carolina Gold, however, could also be more symbolic for the actual
gold the rice brought to Charleston.
“What
I love about Carolina Gold,” said Charleston Grill chef Michelle Weaver, “is that it’s
the most diverse rice I’ve ever worked with. It can work as sticky rice, in porridge, in risotto,
whatever you need.”
It
was my first meal in the 350-year-old southern town, and I’d asked Weaver to
serve me anything rice related.
The
procession of plates on my tasting menu included a few dishes where the rice
not only fulfilled its role of playing a starchy sidekick to an edible protagonist, but also
threatened to steal the show. The Carolina Gold sticky rice that accompanied
the barbecued mackerel, for example, was soft and had a crunch like al dente
pasta. Despite a subtle nuttiness, the rice is not particularly aromatic, which
means it inherits
the flavours it’s sharing the plate with.
Some
have called Carolina Gold the world’s greatest rice. But the crop nearly
disappeared in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. First, the Civil War
wiped out many of the ancient rice fields. Then two massive hurricanes swept
through South Carolina in 1910 and 1911, destroying the 30% of the rice
industry that had managed to recover. Finally, the Great Depression in 1929 was
the knockout punch, putting an end to commercial harvests.
“Then,
in the 1950s, [the brand] Uncle Ben’s comes in,” said chef Sean Brock of Husk, one of
Charleston’s most acclaimed eateries. “That’s when rice went into [a] mass
produced, total mechanized phase of production.”
As a
result, Carolina Gold disappeared for most of the 20th Century. Until, that is,
Dr Richard Schultz, an eye doctor from Savannah, found Carolina Gold seeds
sitting unloved and unused in a USDA seed bank in the mid-1980s. He mainly
wanted to find a rice to use as bait in his duck-hunting hobby, but eventually
produced enough to begin selling it to the public. By 1998, Anson Mills,
which specializes in heirloom southern grains and vegetables, began planting
it.
Essentially,
the rice industry in South Carolina – and the rest of the US – mirrors what
happened to the US beer industry.
Large-scale corporations had wiped out small businesses by the mid-20th
Century, only for artisanal methods and small-batch production to re-emerge in
the late 1990s, gaining a popular awareness as the 21st Century has gone on. In
this case, Uncle Ben’s is to, say, Anheuser-Busch as Carolina Gold rice is to
any small craft brewery.
Chef
Brock made for me a dish inspired by a crab rice he used to eat at Hannibal’s
Kitchen, a local barbecue/soul food spot. It had the taste of
fried rice but the grains were pillow soft in texture and complemented the
fresh shrimp and plump mussels, becoming almost like a rice-and-seafood
porridge.
“Incredible!”
I said, looking up at Brock.
“That’s
Carolina Gold. It’s the reason we have all this,” he said, sweeping his hand
toward the window, where the street was lined with beautifully restored
19th-century buildings. “We have the best cuisine in the world here. It’s why I
get out of bed in the morning. It’s why I have my restaurants.”
The
next day I met up with Jimmy Hagood, a fourth-generation rice farmer and
founder of Food for the Southern Soul,
a distributor of locally made food. Hagood actually grows a newer sibling to
Carolina Gold called Charleston Gold. A shorter-grain rice, it’s more aromatic
and nuttier to the taste. “Often when you see Carolina Gold on a menu here,
it’s really Charleston Gold,” he said.
The
one “flaw” of both Carolina and Charleston Gold is that it’s delicate, and
breaks easily in the husking
process. For this reason, in the 19th Century, about 70% of the whole grain
production was shipped out beyond the Carolinas. Much of what stayed in state
were broken rice pieces called middlins, which produced a softer texture. Many
of the great Lowcountry dishes today use middlins, including the sticky rice I ate at
Charleston Grill and the crab rice I had at Husk. They especially become a nice
substitute to grits.
At FIG,
another great Charleston restaurant, chef Jason Stanhope said he prefers
cooking with Carolina Gold middlins: “They’re like little white pearls.” On the
night I ate at FIG, I had an incredible rice bowl filled with unctuous pork belly,
sweet onions and a slightly sweet orange sauce. Along with the vibrant nutty
rice, it all conspired to create a symphony of flavours I was thinking about
long into the next day. It even inspired me to buy a few bags of Carolina Gold
at an outdoor market to take home with me to New York City.
Rice
doesn’t take a backseat to other ingredients here. In Charleston it’s a
homegrown rock star. A star I couldn’t wait to introduce to my friends back
home.
Culinary (adj.) connected with cooking or kitchens:
Staple
(adj.)
basic or main; standard or regular:
(v.)
to fasten something using staples:
pristine (adj.)
new or almost new, and in very good condition:
heavenward (adv) upwards:
flank (n.) the area of the body between the ribs and
the hips of an animal or a person
(v.) to be at the side of someone or something:
enchanting (v.)
very pleasant:
porridge (n.) a thick,
soft food made fromoats boiled in milk or water,
eaten hot for breakfast
a period of time spent in prison:
starchy (adj.)
behaving in a formal way and without humour:
protagonist
(n.) an important supporter of an idea
unctuous (adj.)
Unctuous people or behaviour expresses too much praise, interest, friendliness, etc., in a way that is false and unpleasant:
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