Elizabeth Lee: Heritage Food Movement Seeks Revival Of S. Carolina Rice
After three days of eating barbecued pork fattened on rice bran, eggs Benedict on rice-flour waffles, saffron rice pudding, rice truffles and a parade of Lowcountry specialties ladled over rice, there was just one thing left to say.
Campbell Coxe, a tall, sunburnt farmer, stepped up to the microphone.
"This isn't whiiiite rice," he said, drawing out the "white" with an exaggerated accent. "This is a gourmet rice."
Carolina Gold rice is that, and more. It's a grain with a past gilded in wealth and shadowed by slavery. Once so prevalent in South Carolina that it inspired a cuisine --- as well as innumerable rice poster beds --- Carolina Gold slipped virtually out of existence for much of the last century.
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Long-grain white rice is a staple food for much of the world. Carolina Gold, just one variety of thousands of long-grain rices, is a passion. An alliance of rice growers, historians and agricultural researchers is trying to spread its fervor for the grain beyond the Lowcountry. That effort includes the first symposium on the rice, held this summer, that brought together top Charleston chefs, academics and growers like Coxe. It also includes a concerted effort to increase the availability of the rice.
The heritage food movement, which celebrates the flavor and history of vanishing American agriculture, has helped revive flat-chested turkeys and heirloom apples. The fledgling Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, which includes many of the South Carolina growers, hopes to tap into that renewed interest in artisan foods and locally grown, sustainable agriculture. A Norcross engineer who grows Carolina Gold in Arkansas is trying to expand the market, too.
Yet there's more to reviving Carolina Gold than wooing consumers with its delicately nutty taste and storied past. The challenges include the most basic demands of farming and food processing, as well as appealing to cooks who may balk at paying $5 a pound or more for white rice.
"It's been marketed more as a source of history than a food item," said Coxe, who supplemented his Carolina Plantation aromatic rice fields this year with a small crop of Carolina Gold. "We want to see if the food market is really there."
Before the Civil War, there was no question about that market. Carolina Gold, prized for its quality, made rice planters some of the wealthiest men in America. Rice fields stretched along the coast from north Florida to Wilmington, N.C. The grain was the bedrock of the region's cuisine, the Carolina Rice Kitchen, which encompassed rice puddings, breads and pirlaus as well as the migratory birds that fed on rice seed.
But the same boggy fields that aided rice cultivation helped doom it after the Civil War. Without slaves to work fields too soft for mechanical harvesting, the rice industry dwindled. A hurricane finished it off. The rice industry moved to Texas, Arkansas and other states, where firmer soil and higher-yielding varieties made farming more profitable. Carolina Gold was relegated to U.S. Department of Agriculture seed banks.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. See the Journal-Constitution for more.]
Campbell Coxe, a tall, sunburnt farmer, stepped up to the microphone.
"This isn't whiiiite rice," he said, drawing out the "white" with an exaggerated accent. "This is a gourmet rice."
Carolina Gold rice is that, and more. It's a grain with a past gilded in wealth and shadowed by slavery. Once so prevalent in South Carolina that it inspired a cuisine --- as well as innumerable rice poster beds --- Carolina Gold slipped virtually out of existence for much of the last century.
...
Long-grain white rice is a staple food for much of the world. Carolina Gold, just one variety of thousands of long-grain rices, is a passion. An alliance of rice growers, historians and agricultural researchers is trying to spread its fervor for the grain beyond the Lowcountry. That effort includes the first symposium on the rice, held this summer, that brought together top Charleston chefs, academics and growers like Coxe. It also includes a concerted effort to increase the availability of the rice.
The heritage food movement, which celebrates the flavor and history of vanishing American agriculture, has helped revive flat-chested turkeys and heirloom apples. The fledgling Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, which includes many of the South Carolina growers, hopes to tap into that renewed interest in artisan foods and locally grown, sustainable agriculture. A Norcross engineer who grows Carolina Gold in Arkansas is trying to expand the market, too.
Yet there's more to reviving Carolina Gold than wooing consumers with its delicately nutty taste and storied past. The challenges include the most basic demands of farming and food processing, as well as appealing to cooks who may balk at paying $5 a pound or more for white rice.
"It's been marketed more as a source of history than a food item," said Coxe, who supplemented his Carolina Plantation aromatic rice fields this year with a small crop of Carolina Gold. "We want to see if the food market is really there."
Before the Civil War, there was no question about that market. Carolina Gold, prized for its quality, made rice planters some of the wealthiest men in America. Rice fields stretched along the coast from north Florida to Wilmington, N.C. The grain was the bedrock of the region's cuisine, the Carolina Rice Kitchen, which encompassed rice puddings, breads and pirlaus as well as the migratory birds that fed on rice seed.
But the same boggy fields that aided rice cultivation helped doom it after the Civil War. Without slaves to work fields too soft for mechanical harvesting, the rice industry dwindled. A hurricane finished it off. The rice industry moved to Texas, Arkansas and other states, where firmer soil and higher-yielding varieties made farming more profitable. Carolina Gold was relegated to U.S. Department of Agriculture seed banks.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. See the Journal-Constitution for more.]