Viewers like you make this program possible.

Support your local PBS station.

>> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: Chef Sean Brock is on a personal mission to explore and revive what Southern food ways once were.

>> SEAN BROCK: All cooks need to do this >> BOURDAIN: When the agriculture of the Southern states was among the best and most extraordinary of the world.

One it could be again.

>> BROCK: And now the corn is extremely cold, which will help retain its flavor.

>> BOURDAIN: He and a small crew of farmers and academics are reintroducing ingredients to the table that have not been seen or tasted for over 100 years or more.

>> At one juncture, the American chestnut was the dominant tree of the forests of southeastern America.

>> BOURDAIN: It all starts, of course, with the seed.

Enter the Mind of a Chef.

♪ ♪ >> BROCK: When I started growing food, one of the first things I noticed was the clarity.

That's what's so common.

Just all you're thinking about is the history of this plant and the future of this plant and the people who are responsible for this plant.

That changes the way you tell its story, the way you cook that plant.

Seed saving was really always a part of my life, but I never really thought about it as seed saving.

It was just a way of survival.

It's just what all the families did.

You had your own particular little bean or corn or whatever it may be, you know, and you passed it down, you took care of it, and it was like a treasure.

When you put that much time into finding a seed and taking care of it, restoring it, you don't just give it to anybody because once it's gone, or cross-pollinated, there's no changing it.

There's no test tube, there's no scientist that can fix that.

To be able to take that seed, the knowledge of those stories, put it into the ground, watch it grow, put it on the plate, serve it, share that story, that's pretty fascinating.

So I have lots of vegetables on my arm, but my favorite one is this corn, the Jimmy Red Corn.

That's there forever.

So this is Jimmy Red Corn, and this is the first plant I took on as a seed saving project.

Several years ago, I wanted to become a seed saver and I contacted Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills and told him what I wanted to do.

He immediately told me I was crazy and I had no idea what I was talking about.

He was exactly right.

But this was the thing he brought to me and said, "This needs to be brought back, it's at risk of extinction."

Jimmy Red is an old Native American corn.

It's an old moonshiner's corn, but it also makes fantastic grits.

So we grew it and then when we got back to the kitchen, we realized that we didn't have a mill.

Old milling is very, very important because it keeps the flavor of the corn in, and I realize that we have the ultimate cold, liquid nitrogen, at the restaurant, so we came up with a technique to put it in the liquid nitrogen and freeze it to retain as much flavor as possible.

And now the corn is extremely cold, which will help retain its flavor.

It's time to put it in the blender.

Oh boy, I've got to show you guys this, it's called a hangover hanky.

Oh!

Dude, it cures any hangover, anytime.

(laughs) I was like, "Man, I need to take this to Bonnaroo.

Five bucks, hangover hanky."

(laughs) So the grind that you're looking for is really a personal preference.

I like a very coarse grind, thinking that would be kind of cool to eat.

Yeah, that hurts.

And what's neat about this, when you dump the grits into your screen, whatever falls below is the cornmeal.

I like to add just a touch of that back in, makes it a little creamier.

So now that we have the texture that we want, we're just going to soak it in water.

I prefer soaking the grits overnight because it helps hydrate and soften them so they actually cook faster.

Now that they're nice and soft, it's time to cook them, I like to start with three parts water, one part grits.

Once it comes to a boil, you'll see the starch take hold and instantly turn creamy.

The water is already thickening.

That's when I like to add some bay leaves.

Knock it down to a slow simmer, allow it to cook for about 45 minutes to an hour.

And it's important to constantly stir, stir, stir because if it sticks to the bottom and burns, the whole process is ruined.

Stirring a pot of grits from the corn you grew yourself is the coolest thing in the world.

So now the grits have been cooking for about an hour.

They're nice and soft and creamy.

And this is the way I like to eat them.

Especially a corn this special, you really want to taste the particular variety.

Just a little dollop of butter.

So there it is.

Jimmy Red Grits.

Simple dollop of butter.

If it weren't for seedsmen, we wouldn't have any food.

It's really that cut and dry, it's really that simple.

>> GLENN ROBERTS: Ready?

You pull it to you, grab it, that's it.

So you're trying to find green wheat to cut.

That's beautiful, Sean.

This is emmer, better known in Italy as farro medio.

It was brought here by Italians by 1676 as a winter crop.

This stuff grows when there's no rain, this stuff grows when there's tons of rain, this stuff grows everywhere.

>> BROCK: This is a lot, man.

>> ROBERTS: Isn't it?

Eight acres, just seed.

>> BROCK: There's Glenn standing there looking over this beautiful field of farro, which, you know, to a lot of people would just be a field of grass.

But to him, he's replaying the entire history of that plant and wondering what's next.

Husk is the idea of celebrating southern ingredients and without Glenn, those ingredients don't exist.

>> ROBERTS: Seed really isn't present.

You know the idea, "Everybody wants local," but they don't stop and think about what sort of integrity you have to have in farming in order to keep seed pure to guarantee the food's gonna be there in two decades.

This is part of the very first rice rotations in the colonies, and the reason why they brought it with them is because it grows like a weed when it's comfortable.

The mission is to get as much landrace, which is what most people would call heirloom, heritage.

Landrace actually is a very true idea of farmer-improved, no science.

It's actually "I'm in the field, I'm zen in the field, this is my food and I'm thinking about it all the time."

>> BROCK: Yeah, I've wanted to use one of these for a long time.

>> ROBERTS: On who?

>> BROCK: Just wheat.

>> ROBERTS: (Laughs) >> BROCK: This thing is sharp.

>> ROBERTS: This is a seedsmen's version.

Yeah, it's supposed to be sharp >> BROCK: (laughs) Farro is to me really one of the most purest things that you can cook because it's untouched.

It hasn't gone through that terrible state that wheat has gone through.

Why do you think there's so many gluten allergies these days?

Because we're modifying these plants so much that our bodies just aren't used to it.

The farro is kind of the symbol of life.

If you keep it pure, you know, this is the way to go.

It's gonna be delicious and it's gonna be incredible.

And it's easy to keep it pure if you just care.

>> Oh, I've grown seed crops for Glenn for six or seven years now and it's really interesting to have the seed of the plant, and you know that those seeds are some of the last seeds of that variety that exist and you have to go stick it in the ground.

It seems like a crazy thing to do.

>> BROCK: It's no big deal, it's only the future of Southern food.

(laughs) >> ROBERTS: Yeah, don't worry about it.

>> BOURDAIN: Fire threshing is a technique used on harvested grain that is green and not yet mature.

This has been done throughout history.

>> ROBERTS: You want to toast what's left inside the shock.

>> BOURDAIN: Burning the farro roasts and dries the seeds so it can be hulled easily and also gives it a wonderful smoky flavor.

>> ROBERTS: We think about primitive civilization as primitive, but when you start doing this stuff, the whole world opens up, it's not so primitive after all.

Once they're in a pile, they start toasting themselves and seasoning themselves with the ash.

Then you have to tread on it, beat on it, flail it.

That makes a nutritional transformation.

It explodes with this huge flavor profile and it's got a fabulous magnetic flavor.

Once you amass a whole bunch of this, then it's ready to cook.

>> BROCK: Southern succotash is one of those great things that you can do in one pot and you can throw everything in there, and this time of year, we have lots and lots of beautiful vegetables.

I have some really fantastic squash and zucchini, we're just getting the first of that in.

These gorgeous dragon beans.

Some enormous fantastic fava beans.

Romanesco.

Some gorgeous squash blossoms.

I'll show you how easy this is.

So, little bit of butter, this is butter we make at the restaurant.

(sizzling) Add those torpedo onions.

To me, succotash is a theory, it's an idea.

It's a one pot sort of thing that should be fresh and vibrant, that's the way I look at it.

That's why it's perfect for this farro because you don't see it very often and it's a great vehicle to marry with all these great summer vegetables.

I always keep vegetable stock on hand to put a splash in to help speed this along because I'm taking a look at what I have and I know which is going to take the longest to work, so that's what goes in first.

So the things that will cook the fastest, the things that you want to keep the texture of, like the squash and zucchini and favas, will go in at the very end.

To me, this is a perfect example of Southern cooking because it's all about vegetables and grains and it's all about being fresh and celebrating the agriculture that we have here in our growing season.

This is healthy food, this is food that's good for your soul.

A lot of people think that Southern food is all unhealthy, and what a lot of people don't know is it's extremely good for you, and one of those fantastic and fresh and vibrant cuisines that's really vegetable driven.

A lot of people think that succotash has to have pork.

I disagree.

The last thing I would want to put into this is pork because the pork's going to take it from this beautiful delicate dish with all these great fresh vegetables, then all you're going to taste is pork.

So I chose not to use pork in this succotash.

I live and die by the theory that we're chasing this moment where something's perfect in the field, it's perfect in the pan and it's perfect in the bowl.

So a lot of cooking to me is catching food at that moment where it's perfect because the person growing it did the same thing.

It's then my responsibility to capture that same idea in the pan.

So now my vegetables are almost where I want them, so I'm going to add this beautiful farro that I just braised in a little bit of vegetable stock.

There are several varieties of farro that Glenn grows and produces and we cook with at both restaurants.

This is the farro verde, one of my favorites.

I like it because it's very vegetable and grassy, which to me is perfect for a vegetable-based succotash.

It's also very important that you don't put in too much farro, there's a nice balance so when you eat them, you can taste the farro and you can also taste the vegetables.

I'll take these squash blossoms and just tear them right in.

You can see the natural starch in the farro is making this creamy.

A few drops of lemon juice to brighten it back up.

Fresh herbs: parsley and chervil.

And this is some aged cheese that we make at the restaurant.

The way I see things, the last thing I want to do is dump a bunch of heavy cream, a bunch of butter, a bunch of pork in here because that mutes it, that takes away from all that work in my mind.

So when I eat this, I want to taste each component.

Look how creamy that is.

God, I love cooking food.

It's the coolest thing, man.

>> DAVID SHIELDS: This is the saga, the return of the legendary melon.

The Bradford watermelon.

There's a problem with watermelons.

A watermelon will cross with any gourd, cucumber, pumpkin, other melon or squash in the vicinity, so you have to keep it a mile apart from any other vegetable or else it will form vegetable mongrels.

So one of the things that became a concern was to somehow impose a discipline on the watermelon.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the breeders appeared.

They created ancestor melons for all the melons we eat now.

There was Carolina Sweet, the Mountain Sweet, and the Lawson watermelon.

There was apparently a Georgia military officer whose name was Lawson.

He gets captured, stuck in a prison ship in the West Indies, a nice Scottish captain gives him a slice of watermelon, he saves the seeds, brings them back to Georgia, he grows them, and it becomes the sweetest, most wonderful-tasting watermelon that anyone has ever encountered.

He kept it absolutely isolated from any other melon, and he only allowed seeds in the hands of two other people.

One of them was Nathaniel Bradford.

The other one we don't know the name of, but he created the Rattlesnake watermelon.

But the Bradford melon was the one that everyone wanted.

If you had a Bradford watermelon, you took measures to defend it.

You had people with guns standing out by watermelon patches and you had young men forming watermelon clubs whose sole intent was to pillage those watermelons.

So the defenders poisoned certain unmarked melons in their field and posted notice, "Pick at your own risk."

Now unfortunately, sometimes the poisoners forgot which melons were marked, and it was not at all unusual to read newspaper stories of entire families being poisoned by watermelon that they had themselves poisoned.

Finally, when America became electrified in the 1880s, the wired melon became popular.

If you were going out and trying to pick it, all of a sudden, the lightning zap would stop you in your tracks.

There were more people killed in watermelon patches than in any other part of the agricultural landscape of America, with the exception of those people who were cattle rustlers or engaged in horse stealing.

The watermelon became fatal, and the Bradford watermelon was one of the reasons why.

>> BROCK: The first thing I planted was this 700-foot row of beets, and we got zero beets because I planted them too deep.

You know, you just put a seed in the ground, right?

No, it doesn't work that way.

By the time I learned from that and grew a beet, when that beet got back to the kitchen, it was the most important beet in the entire world.

You can only gain that respect and experience that emotion if you go through those things, if you fail and then succeed.

I'm here with Professor David Shields of the University of South Carolina and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.

David brought by today something that has kind of disappeared: chestnuts.

>> BROCK: Growing up as a kid, this is something I ate a lot of.

Now these are coming back and there are people growing them.

If you see the chestnuts that most people are used to, they're much larger than this and the flavor is a lot different than the ones that I grew up eating as a kid.

These have been cured, so the process, if I'm not mistaken, they soak it in water.

>> SHIELDS: For 48 hours.

That apparently has some chemical reaction that enacts, and then they bring it out and dry it.

Peeling chestnuts is a labor-intensive activity.

There's only one mechanical peeler in the United States, up in Minnesota.

>> BROCK: I'm thinking about shipping these to Minnesota.

So I'm going to take my cornbread recipe and just sub chestnut meal for cornmeal.

Looks like grits.

>> SHIELDS: Yeah.

>> BROCK: So a couple cups of that chestnut meal.

I'm really excited right now because this is a first for me.

I haven't had the chance to try this yet.

A little salt, baking powder, buttermilk.

Some people use milk, I like the acidity of the buttermilk, I like the twang.

Nice chicken egg.

And that's how easy that is.

Some chopped chestnuts.

All right, let's cook this up.

This is some of that good, awesome ball of fat.

>> SHIELDS: Is this your ancestral skillet here?

>> BROCK: This is my great-grandmothers pan.

I've cherished this thing.

I'm going to let that sit.

>> SHIELDS: Looks good.

>> BROCK: What I look for is I look around the edges and when I can take my spoon and see that it's not attached anymore.

All right, I'm going to pop this in the oven.

It's raging hot.

>> SHIELDS: Oh, yeah.

>> BROCK: Looks pretty cool.

>> SHIELDS: Lovely.

>> BROCK: Another one of the things that David brought by today is some of these beautiful Carolina Red Sieve beans.

These have been soaked.

>> SHIELDS: Originally, they've come from Central America, but they made their way up into the Southeast and became one of the staples of a Native American diet.

>> BROCK: I'm going to quietly sneak these in my pocket now and add these to my collection.

So the chestnut skillet bread is done, the beans are nice and soft, and I decided to throw together a dish combining the two.

You start with a simple basil puree on the plate.

That gives it some nice bright, herbaceous flavors.

A couple of those gorgeous Carolina Sieve Beans.

They look so nice in that green puree.

And I'll take some of this Chestnut bread as sort of the crouton.

Oh, that's fantastic.

This is a condiment with a little green garlic and some basil.

Kind of like a pesto.

And then I was going to take some different vegetables cooked in some different ways.

This carrot has been buried in the embers, and I like that char.

This is a yucca flower, and it has a very complex flavor.

Sweet, bitter, floral.

>> SHIELDS: Substantial texture, too.

>> BROCK: Really simply braised zucchini and squash hybrid.

A little raw carrot.

This is why it takes so long to get your food when you come to McCrady's.

>> SHIELDS: My last meal took five hours.

>> BROCK: (laughs) Raw beets, nasturtium and then just all kinds of herbs and shoots and leaves from our rooftop for those little herbal pops.

Drizzle some vinaigrette, simple: cider vinegar and some fresh herbs and some of that great Georgia olive oil.

That's the prettiest bean salad I've ever made.

>> SHIELDS: That's spectacular.

>> BROCK: This food in the Husk restaurant wouldn't exist without the research and the legwork that these guys do.

And the inspiration that that gives me, I mean, it makes my job so much easier, so thank you for that.

>> SHIELDS: You're welcome.

I see that the benefits will be immediate.

>> BROCK: (laughs) Hopefully we'll be able to influence other people, and I see it starting to happen every day, that a guest just walked in and gave me a bag of seeds and it had their grandmother's name on it, the town they were from, the name of the seed.

So the word's spreading, and people are really starting to understand the importance of saving these old varieties, but also restoring them.

We used to breed for nutrition and for flavor.

Now we're breeding for efficiency and convenience.

We've forgotten about what food's all about.

If we don't take care of these old plants, then we're going to lose a lot of flavor, and a lot of people are really starting to see not only how it changes your respect for food, how it changes your focus for food, but how much more incredibly delicious it is.