Homer Sean Brock was profiled along with other food heroes
in the October 31, 2011, issue of the New Yorker, in "True Grits" by
Bukhard Bilger. My favorite bits are about how people such as he are
re-discovering old foods that are more flavorful than many we get today in the
average grocery store. Here's a taste…
In the past few years, Brock and a small group of local historians, plant geneticists, and farmers have reintroduced dozens of heirloom [crops], many of them untasted since the 1800s….Three hundred years of immigration had brought over every conceivable crop…and farmers found ways to grow them all [in the American South]….David Shields [explains], 'It was…a frenzy of research. They took the carrot culture of Flanders, the turnip culture of Germany, the beet culture of France, and tweaked them to create this extraordinary myriad of vegetables and grains.'…In the 1860s, Shields said, every successful farmer had to be a breeder and agronomist, and many farmers published their work….Glenn Roberts…told me [that] they found that rice tastes best when planted after field peas, sweet potatoes after collard greens, and barley after butter beans….In the 1800s, taste mattered most.
This inspired me to seek out some heirloom beans to cook this autumn. I found some at Williams Sonoma though haven't tried them yet...
