Folio II · The stones
Heirloom Southern grains and slow stone milling
Four old grains carry most of our menu. Here is where they come from, how we mill them cool, and how we cook them over a wood fire.
Why we mill our own
Most commercial cornmeal has the germ removed so it keeps longer on a shelf. That is also where most of the flavor and oil live. Whole-grain meal, ground slowly between stones, tastes like corn. It also goes stale faster, which is why we mill a few times a week in small batches.
Our mill is a pair of 24-inch granite stones turning at low speed. Run a stone mill too fast and the friction heats the meal, which cooks off aroma and starts the oil going rancid. We keep the meal under body temperature as it comes off the stones. Then we sift it into three grades: coarse grits, medium meal, and a fine flour for cakes and dredging.
If you take meal home from the larder, keep it in the freezer. Whole-grain meal lasts a few weeks in the pantry and about six months frozen.
The four grains we build around
| Grain | What it is | How we mill it | At the hearth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jimmy Red corn | A deep red dent corn kept alive on the South Carolina coast, once prized by moonshiners | Coarse grits, medium meal | Grits in a cast-iron pot at the hearth edge; skillet cornbread |
| Carolina Gold rice | The long-grain rice that built the Lowcountry rice economy | Whole grain, plus rice flour for dredging | Boiled, drained, then steamed dry in a covered pot |
| Wren’s Abruzzi rye | A tall, cold-hardy rye long grown across the Southeast as a winter crop | Cracked berries and whole-grain flour | Hearth bread and toasted rye crisps |
| Sea Island red peas | A small red field pea from the Carolina and Georgia sea islands | Whole, never milled | Simmered with smoked pork, served over rice |
Jimmy Red corn
Jimmy Red is a dent corn with kernels the color of old brick. It nearly disappeared in the late twentieth century, down to a couple of ears saved by a single grower, and it came back because chefs and distillers fell for it. It makes rich, slightly nutty grits with a pink cast and cornbread with real backbone.
For grits, soak a cup of coarse Jimmy Red overnight in four cups of water. Skim off the chaff that floats, then simmer low for an hour or more, stirring often and adding water as it thickens. Finish with butter and salt. Rushing grits is the most common mistake we see. They are done when every grain is soft through and the pot smells like popcorn.
For cornbread, heat a cast-iron skillet with a spoon of bacon fat or lard in the hearth until it smokes. Pour in the batter and it should sizzle at the edges. That crust is the reason to bake it this way.
Carolina Gold rice
Carolina Gold is the rice that made Charleston rich in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That story cannot be told honestly without the enslaved West Africans whose knowledge of rice growing built those fields. The rice nearly vanished after the Civil War and the hurricanes that followed. Growers brought it back from seed bank stock in the 1980s.
We cook it the old Lowcountry way. Boil it in plenty of salted water for about 12 minutes, drain it, then return it to the pot with a pat of butter, cover it, and let it steam dry at the edge of the hearth for 15 minutes more. Each grain stays separate, with a gentle, almost floral taste.
Wren’s Abruzzi rye
This rye came to the South from central Italy and settled in as a winter cover and grazing crop. It grows tall, shrugs off cold, and makes a dark, earthy flour. We bake it into a hearth loaf with a long overnight rise and roll it thin for the rye crisps that go under our trout rillettes. Cracked rye berries, toasted in a dry pan, are a good crunchy topping for soups and salads.
Sea Island red peas
These small, rust-colored field peas are a cowpea, part of the same family as the black-eyed pea. They traveled with West African cooks to the sea islands, where red peas and rice became one of the defining dishes of Gullah Geechee cooking. We simmer them gently with a smoked ham hock, onion, and bay until tender but whole, then spoon them over Carolina Gold.
Cooking with the wood-fired hearth
A hearth is not an oven with a fire in it. It has zones. The front edge is gentle and steady, right for grits and rice. The back is fierce, right for searing pork and blistering cornbread crust. We move pots along the hearth through service instead of turning knobs. If you have only a home oven, a heavy Dutch oven and a cast-iron skillet will get you most of the way.