True grits: Cook It Raw chefs visit the LowcountryHave you ever shot a high-powered rifle? Catherine Harrison asked the pretty restaurateur from Calgary. Harrison, who wore camouflage with the aplomb that other women wear Chanel, was mistress of the 1,200-acre plantation outside Charleston where the alligator hunt was about to take place. The Canadian, Connie DeSousa, had asked to be the designated shooter. But no, she admitted, she had never fired any kind of gun before. A .35 should do, Harrison pronounced after a pause. We can't have her messing up her arm -- she's a chef.	
	      
		

DeSousa had flown to South Carolina to participate in Cook It Raw, a more-or-less annual event where an international group of trailblazing chefs congregate in a particular part of the world, explore indigenous foodstuffs and traditions, then cook a meal from the local bounty -- like boy scout camp with better knives.
Launched by Alessandro Porcelli, a gastronomic consultant living in Denmark, and Andrea Petrini, a Lyon-based food writer, Cook It Raw got its start in Copenhagen in 2009, the year of the United Nations climate summit. It assembled 11 avant-garde chefs, a veritable dream team including René Redzepi, David Chang and Massimo Bottura. They foraged on the beach, tasted leeks and asparagus fresh out of the ground, then created a feast using little or no electricity. In a famously competitive profession, they became fast friends.
Since then, the Raw part of the concept has become less literal, more a nod to the affair's back-to-basics nature. A similar group hunted wild boar in Italy, scraped reindeer lichen off rocks in Lapland, made fruitless attempts to net ducks in Japan, picked mushrooms in Poland, consumed copious amounts of alcohol and prepared unforgettable meals. Albert Adrìa of elBulli fame, the only chef to have attended all six events, said, The funny thing about Cook It Raw is that you can't really explain what it is. But it's taught me so much -- these are the most important events I've ever done.
In October, Cook It Raw made its North American debut in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. This gathering, the first without Andrea Petrini, was bound to be different. Clearly, there was an attempt to make it less an exclusive club and more a global movement with a clearly defined philosophy (the main principles: innovation, collaboration, tradition, respect for the environment). An expanded social media presence included a Twitter feed and a Tumblr account. It was also the first time the general public could take part, with 500 tickets sold for a grand barbecue on the last day.
Twenty-one chefs attended, a larger number than ever before, and nearly all new to Cook It Raw. Aside from Adrià, this event's heavyweights included the New Yorkers Dan Barber and April Bloomfield, Australia's Ben Shewry, André Chiang from Singapore, Enrique Olvera from Mexico City and Charleston chef Sean Brock, who doubled as the local host. Explaining why Cook It Raw has become such a hot ticket, Barber said, I haven't been to many events that afford a chef the opportunity to step out of the daily grind of the kitchen and delve into a culture with an exciting gastronomy.
Another New Yorker, Alex Stupak, worked every connection he had in order to glean an invitation. To be able to escape for a week and take a deep, close look at a place you've never been before is really mind-expanding, he said. He compared the experience to his own unconventional career leap, establishing himself as a pastry chef, then opening a Mexican restaurant before he knew how to cook Mexican food.
Several lesser-known chefs participated in a category called Raw Community, including two contest-winners who proved their Raw cred on Tumblr. One was Brandon Baltzley, a young talent with a history of drug addiction who will open his first restaurant, TMIP, in rural Indiana this spring. If you're a cook who's not working at, like, a Denny's, you know about Cook It Raw, he said. So when they put out the thing on Twitter saying they were opening it up to two relative unknowns, I jumped.
Whereas prior Raws were largely European, most of the invitees at the Charleston event hailed from North America. There was one immediately visible difference: the American and Canadian chefs had tattoos. Lots of them. Jimmy red corn and chioggia beets grew up Brock's arms, maize with corn smut covered Stupak's side, Matthew Jennings' knuckles spelled the word Handmade, Baltzley's throat bore knives. Even DeSousa flashed a pin-up girl on her forearm. Next to them, the chefs from overseas looked somehow unfinished.

The Lowcountry larder
Charleston was a brilliant choice for Cook It Raw's North American coming-out. Few regions in the United States lay claim to an indigenous food culture, but this area known as the Lowcountry can, thanks to a host of ethnic influences going back centuries. European settlers imported livestock, fruit trees and techniques like French pastry making, and adopted Native American crops such as corn and squash. Slaves from West Africa introduced okra, cowpeas and benne and also served as the cooks for plantation kitchens. Their fritters and one-pot stews gave rise to typical Lowcountry dishes such as Hoppin' John.
Early in the week, a female griot or storyteller -- a West African tradition -- stood up to bless our dinner in regional Creole as the group enthusiastically devoured a one-pot stew by local chef BJ Dennis. Both were Gullah, or descendants of this area's slaves. Back in the day, whatever we were picking, whatever came out of the sea, whatever was hunted that day, all that got put into the dish, Dennis said. His creation was a mouthwatering combination of broccoli greens, field peas, crab, shrimp and homemade coconut milk. Okra gave it consistency, while habanero peppers and cayenne provided a kick.

David Shields, a professor at the University of South Carolina and the week's guest scholar, said that from 1820 to 1920 the Lowcountry boasted an extraordinary profusion of foods. The main cash crop was Carolina Gold rice, a long-grained variety with a nutty flavor that probably originated in Indonesia and arrived here in the 1780s. Combined with free slave labor, it made the plantation owners of this region exceedingly rich. By 1860, Charleston Harbor was shipping out 141 million pounds of it per year.
The Civil War put an end to slavery, delivering a blow to the rice economy. In the early 20th century, cheaper rice from the American Southwest priced Carolina Gold out of the market. The quality of other Lowcountry crops deteriorated as growers prioritized disease resistance and transportability over flavor. Then California's cut-rate vegetables supplanted the local fare. After 1920, hundreds of ingredients from the Antebellum Southern larder simply disappeared.
Seventy years later, a handful of people realized what had been lost and started working to bring it back. One of these was Glenn Roberts, whose mother had grown up eating Carolina Gold rice. His convoluted career path touched upon classical music, yacht navigation and historical property restoration before he discovered a passion for heirloom grains in the 1990s. Starting with a nearly extinct variety of corn, he has spent close to two decades obsessively hunting down seeds in the wild and in grain banks and working with geneticists for purity. His company, Anson Mills, now grows more than 300 exceptional products, including Carolina Gold rice.
Roberts' products have inspired a new generation of Lowcountry chefs to rediscover or reinterpret their culinary history. These ingredients weren't being grown, weren't being cooked, and therefore true Lowcountry cooking didn't exist to my mind, Brock said. Now it's being restored and the flavors are incredible.
Early Tuesday morning, some of the Cook It Raw chefs tried their hand at harvesting rice, following Roberts through a field of shoulder-high Carolina Gold. Roberts acted as a beater, walking ahead to warn off poisonous snakes and alligators. Half the group cut the rice with hand sickles, the rest used their bare hands. Afterwards they flailed it Antebellum style, using sticks to break the kernels off the stems. They pounded off the hulls with an old mortar and pestle, winnowed the grains in an antique basket and cooked them over an open fire. Shewry said he'd never again let rice go to waste. Realizing how damn hard it is to do that work gave me a new appreciation for it.

Another group tried deer hunting, and in one of the rare organizational slips of the week, forgot about chef Eric Werner and left him alone in the woods for half of the day. He didn't seem to mind, saying afterwards that it was rare quiet time. Meanwhile, the alligator hunt turned up nothing, even when the party tried dragging a beast out of the canal with a hook and line. DeSousa did squeeze off a shot, but her prey disappeared into the water.
    
At lunchtime, the chefs grilled an alligator that had been killed the night before. Most everybody agreed it was bland and chewy.

The feast
The week's high point was the dinner for 50 guests at Brock's restaurant McCrady's, where each chef had to prepare one dish using local fare (the lesser-known chefs worked in teams). Some thrived on the improvisational aspect, so different from the typical conference where chefs arrive with food products and a plan. You can't cheat, Chiang said. You have to come up with something along the trip. That's challenging but also the fun part.
Others felt a little naked trying out a brand new dish in front of their peers. Bloomfield was planning to attempt a smoked oyster ice cream inspired by The Virginia House-wife, the first cookbook published in America. I think at the end of the day you've got to push boundaries and be able to experiment, she said, but that doesn't stop me from freaking out.
Stupak promised to help Bloomfield whip up an oyster foam if the ice cream failed. He had found inspiration right away in the Carolina Gold rice, which he decided to use in pudding. And yet, he also found it a little nerve-wracking to create a dessert in the company of Adrià. He was the reason I became a pastry chef.
Adrià came up with his idea on Monday evening while munching on stone crab claws, his mother's favorite food. He would prepare them with a clear, cold tomato consommé and a green peanut emulsion. He had a second idea, a risotto, but the sauce would require eight hours of labor without any guarantee of success. I've learned this isn't the place for trying out crazy things, he said. It's better to aim for a 7 than to try for a 10 and come up with a 5.
The two winners of the Tumblr contest, Baltzley and the Helsinki-based chef Sasu Laukkonen, were paired up to make a dish, though they had never met before. When the Finn missed his flight connection, he asked Baltzley to choose the products they would use. Baltzley selected shrimp, unaware that Laukkonen was allergic to it. He felt awful upon discovering the error, but his partner's ebullient response was even more of a surprise. I love that, let's do it! Laukkonen enthused. I have all my other senses.
On the day of the dinner they all worked side by side in the kitchen, sharing suggestions, then helping plate each other's dishes in a room where George Washington once dined.

The 16-course meal contained numerous references to the week's discoveries. The Spanish moss that sways gently from the branches of oak trees appeared in Chiang's dish as a backdrop to woodsy lichen flakes and a puree of wild plants. Olvera proposed a Charleston version of Mexican street food, prepared with Anson Mills farro verde. Jennings and JP McMahon served pigeon on bricks from Middleton Place, the plantation where everybody was staying (and where Union troops torched the main house in 1865). Phil Wood, from Sydney, cured swordfish like ham and dedicated the dish to the first Charlestonian he met that week: the taxi driver who talked enthusiastically and endlessly about food but did not eat pork. Bloomfield's ice cream was flawless, served with an aged rib eye steak in a dish she called Freedom.
The most complex dish was a joint effort by Shewry and Dan Barber, who decided to team up after a family funeral called Barber away for part of the trip. Inspired by Glenn Roberts' work, they combined every element in the crop rotation necessary to grow Carolina Gold rice -- all except the rice itself. The dish, which Barber presented as nose to tail eating of a grain, contained more than two dozen ingredients, including Carolina peas, raw peanuts, benne, barley and camelina, a microscopic oil seed from antiquity. The chefs added a little bit of chicken. As Shewry explained, I asked our tour guide what the slaves ate and did they ever get meat. He said very rarely -- a tiny piece of meat.
One hot ticket
All week long you could overhear Charlestonians asking how to score a ticket to the sold-out barbecue on Bowens Island Saturday afternoon. Those fortunate enough to have one included the actor Bill Murray, co-owner of Charleston's minor league baseball team.
The weather was perfect as a mix of local and international chefs manned 20 outdoor stands, each serving up something unique. Adrià grilled an 80-lb amberjack fish steps away from where pitmaster Rodney Scott roasted a whole hog over a wood-burning pit. The Mexicans handed out suckling pig tacos while a special Canadian contingent cooked up seabuckthorn berry BBQ beef tongue. A bluegrass band played as visitors meandered from stand to stand, balancing their pork-laden plates and cocktails by local barman Brooks Reitz and Manhattan mixologist Jim Meehan.
Their batteries recharged, the chefs headed home to their various corners of the world. I'm going back to Spain with renewed energy and ideas, Adrià said. Then he looked down at his unembellished arms. And maybe I'll get some tattoos.

THE CHEFS
Albert Adria
Tickets, 41° Experience, Barcelona, Spain
April Bloomfield
The Spotted Pig, New York City, USA
Dan Barber
Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, USA
Sean Brock
McCrady's, Husk, Charleston, South Carolina
Jeremy Charles
Raymonds, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
André Chiang
Restaurant André, Singapore
Enrique Olvera
Pujol, Mexico City, Mexico
Alejandro Ruiz
Casa Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico
Ben Shewry
Attica, Ripplonea, Australia
Roberto Solis
Nectar, Mérida, Mexico
Alex Stupak
Empellón Taqueria, Empellón Cocina
New York City, USA
Jair Tellez
Laja - Baja, California
MeroToro - Mexico City, Mexico
Eric Werner
Hartwood, Tulum, Mexico
Phil Wood
Rockpool, Sydney, Australia
Connie DeSousa & John Jackson
CHARCUT, Calgary, Canada
JP McMahon
Aniar, EAT Gastropub, Galway, Ireland
James Lowe
The Young Turks, London, UK
Matt Jennings
Homestead, Inc., Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Brandon Baltzley
Crux TMIP, Michigan City, USA
Sasu Laukkonen
Chef & Sommelier, Helsinki, Finland
Photos: Emilie Baltz/Alanna Hale (3rd photo from top)/Cook It Raw