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Hey, it's Francis.
This week we're going back to a show we did last year with the baker Richard Hart and the chef Ashley Shanti, both of whom would go on to win James Beard Awards a few months later.
Have a listen.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
There's something so satisfying about someone who knows their craft so well that you know they start to feel like it's okay to not be perfect about it.
They've learned to see all the details, the techniques and the traditions, and they've come to a place where it's not about being the best or perfect.
It's about knowing that all human endeavor is flawed, but you can be great all the time, and every once in a while you hit on something sublime.
That could be how you might describe Chef Ashley Shanti and her fried fish, for instance.
She's the author of a new cookbook, Our South, Black Food Through My Lens.
And we'll talk to her later in the show.
And we're going to start with one of the best bread bakers on Earth, Richard Hart.
Richard is kind of a chef's baker.
If you've watched the show The Bear, there's like a little shrine to him at the pastry chef Marcus's station.
And Richard was the head baker at San Francisco's legendary Tartine which revolutionized crusty chewy sourdough for a generation.
And then he moved to Denmark to partner with restaurant Noma to open his own place.
And, you know, I got to know Richard after I chased him for years to write a cookbook.
Now that's finally done.
I can't wait for you to get to know him and his surprisingly low-key, anti-sacred cow approach to bacon.
Hey, Richard.
It's great to see you.
Hi, Francis.
Good to see you, too.
Hey, I have to ask you a question, and we've never actually talked about this.
But I remember I was once in a restaurant, and the chef said this thing to me I'll never forget.
He was like, hey, let me give you a word of advice.
Never mess with the bakers, because the bakers are crazy.
They like to hang out by themselves at four in the morning.
Yeah.
So what is a day in the life like for you in the bakery?
What do you love about it?
Do you love that morning quiet time when no one else is there?
What's a day in the life for you?
You know, I hate waking up in the morning.
I think anyone in their right mind would hate waking up at that time in the morning.
Yeah.
When you get there and there's no one there and you start baking, it's actually really peaceful and really a lovely time of day.
And, like, to be there before sunrise... very lovely to see sunrise he's actually very lovely so there's lots of nice things about it uh it's funny that that chef said that the bakers are crazy because as a chef i always used to say the pastry chefs were crazy so uh yeah i guess maybe we just pass it around to each other we're we're the we're the same ones always you know of course yeah but like I mean first thing in the morning like it's lovely to start baking bread in the calm of the day before like you start getting customers and you know all these other aspects come into your day it's very kind of nice peaceful moment Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously having read your book multiple times, you have great energy.
You're a very high energy person.
But I think there is a certain meditativeness too.
That sort of comes through in the way you think about baking and the way you talk about baking.
And I sense a real humility too that I always really enjoyed while reading the book and I want to talk to you about.
There's a way that you describe yourself somewhat early on Um...
You're not there pounding your chest about how you're the best baker.
And sometimes you even just describe yourself as a yeast farmer.
What do you mean by that?
Well, should I start with a yeast farmer?
Yeah, yeah.
The yeast farmer thing came to me because, I mean, the idea is that the yeast, the yeast are kind of your cattle and the dough is where their ranch and you have to nurture them and look after them.
You know, it's not just you mix, like making a mayonnaise where you mix some ingredients together.
You literally, because it's a living, breathing thing.
I guess the whole analogy came about by explaining, trying to explain to customers or anyone that's asking about bread.
Yeah.
You have to treat it as a living thing, the same you treat your cat or your dog, or your child or your whatever.
You have to nurture it and love it and keep it warm and give it everything it needs in order for it to thrive.
Yeah.
I guess that's the yeast farmer side of things.
When it comes to humility and things like that, I think the bread...
I mean, you have to be humble when you're a bread baker.
I don't care how experienced you are.
You have good days, you have bad days.
Some days you have the most beautiful bread.
Some days you have the most terrible bread.
And like, even with experience, like so, stay humble and like you know, and be true and honest and honest.
You know, hope that you make good bread and some days that fails.
And also that's super embarrassing when you have like chefs or famous people from around the world coming to your bakery and you're not so happy with your bread that day.
You can't help but stay humble.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny because I think people think of bread baking, baking more generally, but bread baking, and certainly in pastry, maybe the whole sort of discipline of baking.
People think it was being about formulas and being precise.
And we in cookbooks, too, inadvertently, I think, kind of push that.
Like when we talk about, oh, in baking recipes, we want to use grams.
We want to be very specific and very precise.
I think people have this sense of like, oh, it's just like...
Well, there's a right way to do it.
And the right way is 101 grams of whatever and 94 grams of that.
And when you talk about being a yeast farmer, when you talk about the source of humility, it's also recognizing that it's a living, breathing thing.
And it'll have moods.
Also, people were making breads before scales even existed.
But get into the nitty-gritty a little bit of cultivating a starter, feeding a starter, maintaining a starter.
Sometimes people feel like it's a huge commitment.
I think people feel intimidated by that piece of it.
And they're always hearing, I feel like, oh, no, it's okay.
It's easy.
Oh, if you don't really want to feed it that day, you can put it in the fridge.
People want to sort of have these sort of hacks.
What's your take on that?
I mean, there are hacks.
You know, for years, my take on that was like, no, if you have a starter, you feed it every day.
You have to feed it every single day.
Otherwise, it's not going to be exactly where you want it.
But like, I mean, I don't think that as a home baker, that necessarily works.
Really?
Your life is busy.
You have kids.
You do this.
You do that.
And you forget to feed your sourdough.
And then you feel guilty or you start to panic.
So recently...
I think it's in the book.
If not, it's like you know, as I say in the book, like this is what I've learned up to date and I'm still learning.
But recently I've started drying out my sourdough because I'm at home.
I'm not baking every single day.
And there are days where I want to bake.
So basically, at the moment, if I want to put my starter away, to make it dormant, to go to sleep, I take a tablespoon of the live active sourdough and put it into a ton of flour.
So it's basically like breadcrumbs, dried, completely dried out.
And then I leave it in my fridge in that state because I think it goes super slow and it can't really do much.
Stops it from getting too sour and too acidic.
And then when I want to refresh it, I'll just put it in some water and feed it up over a couple of days and it comes back to life super fast.
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Yeah, it really works.
I'm not sure if it's in the book.
We got to fix that in the reprint.
Yeah, I mean, oh my God, the book's done.
So, like as I said, I keep learning new things and coming up with new things, and that will be a constant.
But like this idea is, it's just if you put it in your fridge as a wet living sourdough.
As it is, that's not ideal for it because like, basically yeast want to be kept warm, they don't want to be in a cold environment and not be fed, and what will happen is you won't feed them and then the yeast will start to dwindle and get smaller and smaller in population and the bacteria will become heavier, like more forward in the population, and then basically your bread will suffer from that.
So like basically, you want to try, and how can I do it without making my yeast and bacteria cultured?
They're just completely changed by just putting it in the fridge and not feeding it.
There's also this mystique too that people have about starters.
And I feel like you're touching on the subject a little bit, but you're indicating that some ways of feeding or not feeding can sort of change the ratio of bacteria to yeast.
And there's all this like sort of mystique that people have about.
Oh, I got this starter from my grandmother.
You know who brought it over from you know Estonia and all that stuff.
Oh, this starter is like a thousand years old.
Yeah.
But you don't really subscribe to that that much.
I kind of don't buy that actually.
Like I understand how, like it's a nice story or it came from your grandma, but I don't really buy it because at the end of the day, a sourdough starter is just fermented flour and water.
There is nothing more to it than that.
It's as simple as that.
You ferment flour and water, and then all of a sudden your sourdough comes alive.
There's yeast living dormant in your environment and in the flour and basically you put them in an environment where they thrive and they come to life.
So...
I think your 100-year-old sourdough doesn't make any difference, because it could just be a two-week-old sourdough and you still have a fermented flour and water.
Now maybe people are going to say that that's not true and they don't believe in that.
There's like somewhere, I think it's in Germany or something, and there's like a sourdough library.
And this company I think it's Purata.
It's like this huge baking brand company that make industrial bread have this sourdough library where they've taken sourdoughs from different bakers from all around the world and they feed it to their feeding schedule and they keep their sourdoughs in different jars in this library.
And so maybe they would say that's not true, but...
For me, I just kind of see it as fermented feral mortar.
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Hart is the author, with Laurie Williver and Henrietta Lavelle, of Richard Hart Bread intuitive sourdough baking.
We'll be back.
More with him in just a minute.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
Fox Creative.
I just believe in simplicity in everything.
Simplicity in food, simplicity in tools.
I think just having one really good knife is a total game changer.
I love using mini whisks.
I love my microplane grater.
I absolutely love my Vitamix.
I use it all the time.
My name is Lily.
I work at Vox Media, and I have two teenagers.
They are hungry literally all the time.
I grew up in a Lebanese household.
Both my mom and dad made hummus probably every couple days, and I just continued that tradition.
I think a lot of hummus recipes are too complicated and I think the best ones are very simple, but I think there are some very important tips that I think are essential.
The ingredients you need to make hummus are a couple cans of chickpeas.
I always, always, always wash my chickpeas.
Two to three lemons.
I like hummus very lemony.
I would say like two to three cloves of garlic.
It's always raw.
Tahini and salt, of course.
And then my other secret weapon is ice cubes.
It feels so wrong when you're putting them in because you're just like how is this science going to work?
And then I just go into my Vitamix.
I give it a blend.
And then that's it.
Get in there.
Oh, my God.
It's good.
Is it good?
Really good.
It's so good.
There are some essential foods that endure, like a simple and delicious hummus.
And then there are essential tools like Vitamix blenders.
Only the essential at Vitamix.com.
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Hey, you hear that?
Exactly.
That right there is the sound of fall.
Now, you can't really hear the leaves falling yet, but you can hear it's coming home from school.
And when it gets closer to fall season, I start thinking about apple picking, with my kid stressing out, watching my team on Sundays and all the people who are going to be getting their PSL on.
That's right, the pumpkin spice latte is officially here from Starbucks.
It is handcrafted with Starbucks signature espresso, steamed milk and real pumpkin, then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon and nutmeg for the perfect taste of fall.
And it's true, there actually are real pumpkins in the pumpkin sauce which is used in both the PSL and the pumpkin cream cold brew.
So fall is back, and so are the warm sips and comforting moments at your neighborhood Starbucks.
It's time for coffee lovers everywhere to grab their favorite drink Soak in the autumn vibes, because when the leaves are falling, the lattes are calling.
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I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking right now with Richard Hart, baker extraordinaire and author of Richard Hart Bread intuitive sourdough bacon.
Get back to it with him.
You know, you believe so much in so many of the The details of bread, the skills, the techniques, the ingredients, for sure.
You're very committed to using particular flours or investigating your flours.
But at the same time it also feels to me that you kind of also want to democratize it a bit and not have all this mystique where people feel like, oh my God, it's this totally impenetrable world if I'm not 100 in.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like once you learn it, it's so simple.
It couldn't be more simple.
But then you know, like there's so many different variables, like minute variables, that will change the outcome.
But the reality is it's actually really simple.
But you just need to like understand a few of the fundamentals that you know.
Like yeast like to be kept warm.
And, you know, like there's a certain amount of time required.
It takes to make your dough.
And it's a very simple thing to do.
But, like, to make a perfect loaf of bread is actually very tricky to master.
But, like, I mean, I think it's a very fun journey.
Yeah.
Another sort of sacred cow that i feel like you you kind of bust a bit is this other idea too, that people have like about forming loaves.
Shaping loaves oh, you have to have this like perfect touch, you have to make it this perfect way.
Um, also scoring god.
I feel like there's a whole corner of the entire internet that's all only just like.
You know videos designs yeah, scoring like beautiful designs, and you don't really buy into much of that either.
What so?
What are the keys to to shaping a loaf?
You know, working at Tartine for years, we had this beautiful, intricate shaping technique.
And the whole world started watching and following.
And honestly, it looked like watching the ballet or something.
It was beautiful.
And to master it.
You felt like a complete legend that you could shape this way and master this dough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Moving to Copenhagen.
We just kind of messed up the dough one day and it was a bit drier than usual and we just kind of folded it in half and it came out better than ever.
And I was always under the impression that if it was, you know, at Tartine, I was under the impression that if you didn't shape it this way, the loaf wouldn't blow up, the score wouldn't open, you wouldn't get the bread you were looking for.
And you know what?
Within just one mistake, we proved that whole idea wrong.
Wrong, you know, or just like unnecessary, especially when you're shaping 500 loaves of bread to take that huge step out of the equation.
We saved so much time.
And it actually I feel like I guess you know, as you grow as a cook or a baker or whatever you do, the less you mess around with something, the better it is.
It's like less is more.
So if you're cooking a steak and you're brand new to cooking a steak, you want to fiddle with it.
You want to move it.
You want to touch it.
The truth is you just want to leave it and let it do its thing.
And yeah, the older I get, the more I realize that's the case with everything.
You just leave it alone.
You leave it to ferment till it's the right way.
You pre-shape it.
You final shape it minimally, like not degassing it.
And then you just let it Again, do it second fermentation before you bake it.
I guess, when it comes to scoring also, I mean, there's a lot of intricate, beautiful patterns out there.
But like I mean the whole idea is, I just want it to look more natural and like, give it a quick slash.
So it like busts open and, like you know, it's in charge of its own beauty in a way.
Oh, i love that.
Yeah, i love that way of putting it.
Yeah, like the function of it is really just oh, you're letting the, the gases come out, right for sure.
Yeah, the idea is that it's gonna, the gas is gonna come out somewhere, so you want to score it, so the gas comes out, kind of under your control.
But yeah, i mean, like i just think again, like the more you mess with it, the it's not for its benefit.
Yeah, Yeah.
It's the same with artists and painters and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Less is more, but also that doesn't mean you're learning less.
In fact, you learn more to get to that point.
Yeah.
You mentioned working at Tartine, which is in California.
You're originally from UK.
You were in California and then eventually you moved to Denmark and you baked in Copenhagen for many years.
And there you fell in love with rye bread.
Yeah.
Talk to us about – and you're not there anymore.
I want to get to where you are now in a bit.
But I want to – thinking of your Copenhagen stop, you learned to fall in love with rye bread.
And I'm amazed by northern European rye bread because it's so different than what we have, what we call rye bread here in the US.
Usually it's like a marble rye that basically looks like it's –
Sandwich bread with a decorative swirl.
It is, yeah.
I fell in love with marble rye when I first moved to America, yeah.
I mean, the stuff is nice, but it's not anything like... No, it's not rye bread.
Yeah.
So tell us about what you love about rye bread.
What's a good rye bread like?
When I moved to Copenhagen, my partner's...
Said look, the only way you're going to make it here is you're going to have to make the best rye bread.
Everyone here thinks of, you know, this actually blew my mind.
Everyone here in Denmark.
When you talk about bread, their idea in their head is rye bread, which is a dense, heavy loaf of bread.
I guess in America or in England a while ago we wouldn't have even dreamed of eating bread like that.
And that was the furthest thing from our mind when we thought of bread.
So I spent a long time trying to perfect this bread, this loaf of bread.
And also learn new techniques because...
At the time, leaving California, moving to Denmark, I was kind of set in my way of how I made bread.
Like it was a long fermentation, sourdough, but like really young sourdough.
So it was... not acidic, slight acid notes, but not acidic.
And then a really long overnight fermentation in a cool room.
So the bread can kind of get really complex in flavor and the crust can be super beautiful.
So like basically that was my idea of making bread.
So moving to Denmark and their idea of my bread not being bread was okay.
I better try and learn some new ideas.
When I first got there, I was a little lost because it's like, yeah, let's move to Denmark.
Let's open a bakery.
And you move to Denmark and you realize you don't actually have a bakery.
And what am I going to do now until I find my bakery?
It was a confusing moment in time to go from working as a head baker to all of a sudden not working at all.
And luckily, I found who is someone who is now a good friend of mine.
He has a bakery on the outskirts of Copenhagen, a Danish baker.
And he loved tartine.
His name's Lars.
He invited me to come and work at his bakery while I was waiting to find my bakery in Copenhagen.
And that was basically where I learned techniques for making danish style rye bread uh, from the help of lars.
So basically, a danish style rye bread, or a rye bread in general, it needs a lot of acidic sourdough um, So you want to make the sourdough the opposite of what I consider to be a sourdough?
It needs to be high acid.
It needs to be at least, you know, normally like 20, 12 hours old, 20 hours old, the sourdough.
Because otherwise, if you make a sourdough using a really young sourdough and use only rye flour, you end up with all these weird holes inside the loaf.
Oh, interesting.
So the acid stops that from happening.
Yeah.
So basically you use a really old sourdough and then the next day you mix the dough and then you put it in the containers and you proof it and bake it straight away.
You proof it within a couple of hours and then you put it in the oven.
So it was a completely new idea on making bread.
And I guess my whole world opened up to like, man, there's just literally so many types of bread.
So it was really like eye-opening, moving to Denmark and realizing oh man, everyone likes their own type of bread.
And there's so many types of bread to explore.
And what a pleasure.
Yeah, that's so cool.
Yeah.
That Danish rye is, like you said, very dense.
Um, it's not.
Yeah, you want to slice it super thin, like it shouldn't be like a big thick sandwich slice.
It should be sliced super thin.
Uh, and in denmark they eat it as an open sandwich.
You know, they eat it with all kinds of toppings on that slice of bread, but they never toast it.
But like, i love toasting it and put you know, maybe even pan frying it, but it's very delicious yeah, it's great.
So now you're in Mexico.
Lots of very different bread culture.
What is inspiring you there?
What are loaves of you either seen there that you haven't seen before, or loaves that you're creating, inspired by there?
You know, Mexico is a completely different world.
If you talk to a Mexican about bread, you talk about bread.
You're talking just about bread.
In their head they're thinking of – it could be a concha, a croissant, any kind of pastry in Mexico they consider to be bread.
It's a pan dulce, but if they're talking about bread, it would be – if I'm talking about bread, we're talking about a savory bread that you make a sandwich on.
Over here, because they didn't really have bread that they made sandwiches on here in Mexico –
They eat bread – tortillas is their bread, you know?
Like, their sandwich is a taco.
Also, they have tortas.
But, like, basically, their bread staple is a tortilla.
So when you talk about bread they're really – in their head they're thinking of all kinds of sweet, delicious savory –, sweet pastries.
Like buns and – yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So –
I mean, I hope what we're going to do here is what we did – not I hope.
I know what we're going to do here is what we did similar in Denmark.
I'm going to look at what, you know, what people have emotional connections to, what they saw as kids, what they think of as like hey, I love this or I love that, certain cakes and pastries and just try and make the best version of it I can think of.
Yeah.
You have this great – moment in the book where you you talk about.
You know you were driving home one day from the bakery and your head is just like on fire with all these ideas.
Like Oh, what if I use this type of grain in the, in the dough or this?
You know what would happen if I did this?
What happened to do that?
And uh, I remember you were saying, because you were writing this book uh, in part while living in Mexico, and you were like Oh, I want to do loaves, recipes for loaves that use masa.
You know the the the, the corn dough, the tortilla dough.
Yeah.
Um, We decided not to put those in the book because you were still working on them.
But have you experimented with that?
Not quite yet, but my brain is going to all of these grains.
Definitely using masa, but in sweet forms, in cookies, in cakes, and seeing what that looks like.
Because it has such a distinct flavor, I think it would... borrow very well to sweet things.
So we're going to look at things like that.
And Mexico grows a lot of amaranth.
So we're going to look at amaranth, a lot and things that are definitely from here.
One of my ideas here at the moment is to I have luckily I have a beautiful team of bakers who have agreed to come and work for me from Mexico and basically, once we start, I just want them.
Hey, can you just make me something?
Make me something that's from your childhood and you know from there.
We'll like taste it and look at it and assess it and see where we can go with it.
You know, love it.
Someone said to me, if you were to open a bakery in Singapore or Asia or Japan, what would you do?
What would be the first thing you would do?
Coming from Denmark, it was very clear to me or even moving to Denmark, I think copying and pasting your brand is not the right way to go.
I believe that if I'm a baker in America, I should make an American bakery.
If I'm in Denmark, a Danish bakery.
In Mexico, a Mexican.
So if I was to go to Singapore or Asia or anywhere, I think the first thing I would do is get a pastry chef and start working with them so they can show me what they're emotionally connected to.
What can bring?
You know what can bring?
This like moment where wow, I remember eating something like this when I was a kid.
You know, like these ideas of like wow, I had that when I was a kid.
And, you know, just those things are what really excites me.
Yeah. yeah i mean i've got this idea of being in london i've always for years i've been like dreaming of opening a bakery in london i always seem to move further and further away from london but i grew up there and like i have all these ideas of like all these things i as a kid that i would love to recreate rather than just make it you know like the typical european chocolate croissants croissants i just want to make a One day.
One day, for sure.
First, plant your flag in Mexico.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
We'll see you there.
All right, Richard, this has been a blast.
Thank you so much for making the time.
Okay, great.
It was super lovely talking to you.
Brilliant.
Richard Hart is the author, with Laurie Williver and Henrietta Lovell, of Richard Hart Bread, Intuitive Sourdough Baking.
You can find his recipe for rye wrapped in fig leaves at splendidtable.org.
You know, I first came across the chef Ashley Shanti while watching Top Chef.
She was great.
But after her turn in the TV spotlight she decided she wanted to go back home to her adopted home region of Appalachia.
She left the acclaimed kitchen she was running and eventually opened up her own restaurant up in the mountain south called Good Hot Fish, a tribute to the fish fry matriarchs in her life.
She's just written a beautiful book, Our South Black Food Through My Lens, and it shows glimpses of this homeland, its different regions and her very inspired personal food.
So hey, chef, it's great to see you.
It is wonderful to see you too, Francis.
So excited to have this conversation.
Me too.
So, you know, I'm going to dive right into it.
I'm going to start with the book and with the title, actually, Our South.
And the reason why I thought of that is because in this book, you write just a little note.
Driving back down South or further into the South could sometimes be a painful experience.
The place could be loaded for them with fears and concerns.
So how did you come to your love and pride in the South, to the point where you would title your book that?
Yeah, that that is quite a question.
And, you know, you're right.
There is such a storied history for for black people throughout the South.
And a lot of that.
This book for me was grappling with that and not even realizing that those moments of traveling are on those dirt roads through Maysville and Bishopville and all the bills of South Carolina.
How tough that must have been.
And you know that journey through writing Our South you know talking about black food through my lens I was really able to take a look at kind of what their perspective must have been.
And I think it is incredibly powerful because it's something that we still see today that there are certain towns.
I mean, I can admit, you know, I think the outside perspective of this region that I'm in now, southern Appalachia for city folk, this can you know, the backwoods, the backcountry is, can be a scary place even still.
And I think that that is what is so powerful about food, especially for black and brown people, finding place all over, but mainly in the South, food being that comforting thing that they're always able to turn to.
And I know that that was something for my family that was so important and made them feel those feelings of warmth and togetherness amongst themselves.
And you know, for me that just kind of describes the power of food and specifically the power of Southern food.
Yeah.
And so now obviously, you've devoted a life and a career to cooking both traditional foods and also really unique, innovative foods, as we see in the recipes in this book.
And you divide your life in the South across different sub-regions, one of which you call the bad country which you just referenced, Appalachia.
You know I had the pleasure of working with this amazing writer, Crystal Wilkinson, who just wrote a book Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghost about the Black experience of Appalachia.
And basically the book starts with like, first of all, we do live here.
You know, it was almost like we had to sort of establish the fact that there are Black people in Appalachia and a history of Black people in Appalachia.
So you're super committed to this place and many of its foods.
And one of them that really stands out is Leather Bridges.
Tell us about Leather Bridges.
So Leather Britches, it is speaking about a specific type of bean.
And we call those greasy beans here in Southern Appalachia.
They call them greasy beans because, you know, the outer pod is incredibly shiny.
It looks like someone, you know, rubbed grease on them.
They're not like waxy.
They're a little waxy in feeling, but you know they don't actually feel greasy, but they are greasy in appearance.
It's like a type of string bean.
Right.
It's a type of green bean.
And, you know, it grows in such abundance.
And if you think about, you know, wanting to hang on to it for the seasons to come, knowing that this was, you know, a seasonal thing, leather britches came about, and that was taking a needle and thread and and threading these beans onto a string.
And it kind of always looked like garland to me.
And I have memories of riding through this region and kind of seeing it hang on porches and in barns that were used for smoking.
It always reminded me of garland or curtains.
And So that was used as a method of preservation.
But also the really cool thing about what was meant for preservation and prolonging the season of these greasy beans was that it also caused the flavor of these beans to become so concentrated.
Even in the wintertime, if you think about them hanging above wood stoves.
And taking on this smoky flavor.
They became so umami rich and the flavor is so much more concentrated than if you would have just eaten this bean fresh.
So you know, I don't believe that the intent when this was created was to make this very simple crop more flavorful.
But it did.
And I think that that speaks to these very special methods of preservation in this region.
I think another big question also is why are they called leather britches?
And so...
You know, when they start to dry, they become incredibly shriveled.
And to someone back in the day, they were reminiscent of leather pants that had gotten wet and dried in the sun.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
So they're called leather britches.
Oh, I love that.
There's a great photo of them in your book where it really does look like a garland of these beans.
After you've strung them up, you hang them to dry and they start to wrinkle and shrivel.
And then, when you prepare them, when you actually cook them, you take them from wherever they're hanging right.
Or, like you said, if they've been like gently smoking over a wood stove or whatever.
That flavor must be incredible.
What do you do?
Right. you just like zip them off the string and then you braise them, right?
Yeah, you cut that bottom knot and you zip them off the string and cook them in water.
And you know them.
Being dry, they take significantly longer to cook than if you were to cook them fresh.
But Yeah, I mean, you cook them down until they're nice and tender and you add some seasoning meat to that.
And yeah, you know, it's just such a simple, umami-rich dish.
And I love it because I mean something that you know I've done in restaurants is use this as a vegetarian bean option.
Obviously, in the South, we love our seasoning meat.
But you know, this is a dish where you don't necessarily need to add something like salt pork or a ham hock.
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Shanti is the author of Our South, Black Food Through My Lens.
More with her in a minute.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.
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I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious cooks and eaters.
We're talking with Ashley Shanti about her book, Our South, Black Food Through My Lens.
Let's get back to it with her.
I want to go to another of your southern regions that you call the lowlands.
First, how do you define the lowlands?
Because this is different than the low country which is the coastal part of South Carolina, Georgia.
What are you calling the lowlands?
So Tidewater, Virginia, it's a pretty particular region.
It is also called the Lowlands.
Certainly not known as that anymore, but it's also another low-lying coastal area.
But, you know, different than the Lowcountry.
The history there is far different.
You know, when we go back to the 13 colonies, some of the original Black recipes were can be attributed to this area.
Someone that I think speaks very well on this topic is Michael Twitty.
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, and the cooking gene, you know.
And so I think that that was something that was really important to highlight about this area is that some of these recipes are the first documented recipes that our culture has seen in America.
Mm-hmm.
And in this chapter in The Lowlands, you have a recipe for cornmeal fried fish.
And your restaurant is called Good Hot Fish.
So tell us about your connection to the fish fry.
Yes.
So, I mean, the connections for me to Fish Fry are very deep.
There's a very rich history in my family, being from the South, also originally from coastal Virginia, and just also the history of the fish camp throughout the South.
For my family in particular, you know, we had what was known as a fish camp back then.
I think fish camps look a little different now, as formal restaurants that you see still sprinkled throughout the South.
But then it was my family in Southern Appalachia or even places like Midlands of South Carolina, not being close to the coast and having access to fresh fish and kind of having what they call the fish plug.
You know someone that could take a refrigerated truck from the coast and drive it up the mountain or drive it to a place where fresh seafood wasn't as accessible?
And I mean typically.
This was an entrepreneur themselves too, that just had the ability to – that had the ability to have access to all of this fresh fish and then sell it for us, what was a really great cost in these regions that aren't so close to the coast.
So then, flipping that when you get to these areas and turning that into a business which was known as a fish camp and the name came from actually, The act of setting up these tents, typically sometimes around campgrounds.
I know some people I've talked to have a different experience with fish camps, especially here in backcountry just fishing fresh trout and setting up camp and frying that right on site.
And so, for the women in my family, the tradition was that the men would scale the fish, clean it and do all of what, of course, they deemed as the very hard work.
And then pass that fish along to the women that always had, of course, their special recipe to dredge the fish in typically contained cornmeal.
And then they would fry that within a little outdoor, setup a little propane fryer and go out with the hot, freshly fried fish in these paper brown bags and yell in their communities good hot fish come, get your good hot fish.
And I imagine it being quite a sense of empowerment.
And I mean, I can only compare it to what it felt like to have my first good hot fish pop up.
Incredibly empowering to see my own community show up in that way for something as simple as fried fish.
So it feels really good to know that good hot fish has kind of served as a nod to that.
So let's talk about frying fish.
What is the secret to great fried fish?
I mean, like most fried fish is pretty good, you know?
Hard to go too wrong unless you really hammer it or, you know.
There are some ways to go wrong.
Yeah, I know.
But I think, for someone who knows the craft as intimately as you do, what are some of the things to keep in mind if you want to make truly great fried fish.
Sure.
Yeah.
So I mean, one thing I love about fried fish is oftentimes at least for me it can feel like a crowd pleaser.
And one thing about certain varieties of fish, and typically it's what we call frying fish in our seafood industry.
It's fish that's just great for frying.
You know, it's not too thick that you're going to have to over fry it to completely cook the inside.
But you know in any case, you know something like catfish or flounder.
Those are great frying fish.
And, you know, they're so forgiving.
It's as if they were made for frying.
In that, you know, you get some really great dredge and, of course, amazing fish.
And, you know, at the right temperature and the right oil, you fry it.
And I mean even if you go a little over time.
This beautiful dredge just encases this amazing fish.
And, you know, it's just it keeps the moisture.
The fish inside is flaky.
Yeah.
Um, I think that most people lean towards vegetable oils.
We use peanut oil.
And there's actually a misconception surrounding peanut oil that if you have peanut allergy, then you can't eat something that was fried in peanut oil.
So I always tell our guests to, of course, check with their personal doctor.
But the truth is it's the proteins that are in peanuts that people are allergic to.
And those don't exist in peanut oil.
So we fry in peanut oil and it just has a great smoke point.
And of course, nailing that temperature, we use a commercial fryer so we can go about 350.
If you're at home you want to use a thermometer to make sure you're around 350 375 to hit that sweet spot.
Of course, there's ways to test that oil to make sure it's hot.
Obviously, Francis can go on and on about this all day.
No, I love this.
I'm really into it.
Some of our secrets also are the cornmeal that we use.
This, again, just speaks to the beauty and the magic of backcountry.
We have an amazing miller.
They grow and mill our cornmeal to our specifications.
They do the blend specifically for us.
Okay. just based on the types of corn that we want in it.
And, you know, we have nailed exactly how fine we want this cornmeal.
So, you know...
They grow a really great product.
The folks are called – this is Dave Bauer at Farm and Sparrow out here in Asheville.
And, you know, again, great product.
We have our house seasoning, of course, that is our little magic blend.
Hit that with our little kitchen pepper spice, which is something that is in the book quite a bit and something that I sell to as a spice blend.
But, you know, of course, good seasonings, good technique.
Um, if you do those things, you can't really go wrong.
Yeah.
Um, talk to me about the cornmeal.
Obviously you have, like you said, highly detailed specifications on what types of corn and the finest.
If we're at home and we're buying cornmeal or just using cornmeal and a cornmeal dredge uh, There aren't that many options, unless you really start digging for them with artisanal or heritage millers and such.
But generally speaking, are you looking for a fine cornmeal, the one that almost feels like flour?
Are you looking for a grittier one?
What would you suggest for us at home?
That's a great question.
So if you're in the grocery store, I would go for the fine yellow cornmeal.
You know, the yellow, that's going to give you the nutty flavor that you want.
And, you know, our cornmeal is a little coarser than that.
But I think fine is a really good alternative if you can't find an artisanal miller in your city.
Okay, cool.
And that gives you that flavor you're talking about.
Exactly.
I want to go, I definitely want to touch on one more recipe.
Sure.
Okay.
The Virginia Yak.
Absolutely.
And tell us about the story of this recipe or of this dish, just like tradition.
Yeah.
Telling the story of the dish, I think, is easier than telling the story of the actual recipe.
Because, you know, it's one of those things in the South, everyone has their own recipe.
So in Tidewater Virginia, because of Chinese immigration in the early 20th century.
Often those Chinese immigrants found themselves ostracized.
And because of that you'll hear a lot of stories of Chinese families dying finding place in black communities.
And through that relationship Chinese immigrants in these black communities, you'll see that their food ways kind of mesh together.
And a lot of Chinese restaurants would sell what was called yak, this very, very approachable Chinese-American dish that was often sold to the soldiers at Norfolk Naval Bases.
And, you know, this yak, it was typically served in that Chinese-American box.
It was called a box of yak.
And it just became such a popular thing.
Even now it is a huge staple at a lot of Chinese restaurants in that community.
And also, you know kind of one of those things and i think that new orleans um, this is true for them too you kind of just know someone that might sell it out of their house, or you'll be at the beauty salon and someone will just walk in with courts of yacht, i think nowadays it's it's usually in courts because it's more mobile.
Um, but yeah it's, it sounds, you know, like I feel like one of those dishes that you know.
I find this in a lot of dishes.
That is true when it comes to immigrants coming to America is that you know they're using ingredients that They're more focused on flavor as opposed to what the ingredient is.
You know, you have Haitian spaghetti where they use ketchup.
Virginia yak is largely ketchup based.
And so, you know, for my mom it was always, you know, something that she never really found appetizing.
So for my dad and I, it was something that we could always sneak away and get.
Um, but you know, and maybe this is the chefed up version.
Um, and typically you know you'll find like little frozen baby shrimp in it, but it's something that for me, when I eat, it just takes me back.
And I think that it's so comforting and so tasty and also just such a really cool story and very descriptive of the diversity of that region too.
Yeah.
Could you describe what the Virginia yak is?
Like just describe the dish.
Yes.
So when I think of the traditional Virginia style yuck, it is tomatoey, but in this fun processed way, because that tomato is coming from ketchup.
So it's also kind of sweet, but salty because there's soy sauce too.
And then it's got this tang of vinegar.
And of course, that soy sauce gives it this umami richness.
And then there's usually creaminess from a boiled egg rich in seafood, which adds to this beefy broth.
It is truly a world of flavor.
And I feel like my first introduction to what wasn't traditional Chinese food obviously, but my first intro to Chinese food in some way.
And it's something that I still love to make and I turn to often to kind of find that level of comfort I'm looking for when I'm cooking.
Yeah.
And it's like a sauce noodle.
It's like a lo mein kind of dish.
It is a noodle dish.
And oftentimes the noodles that are used are dried spaghetti noodles.
In Virginia, yucca mane is saucy.
I've had New Orleans versions that are a little drier.
And I've had New Orleans versions that are saucier too.
So I think it kind of just depends on where you get it from.
But the versions that I'm used to were that lovely ketchup-based broth.
All right.
Well, thank you so much, Jeff.
I love hearing about you, know the history of where you are and the history in your own family, and how you've combined those two things in your experience.
Yeah, I always love to talk about what Southern food means to me and what these regions look like from my perspective.
So I really enjoy speaking with you, Francis, and thank you so much for the space.
Ashley Shanti is the author of Our South, Black Food Through My Lens.
You can find her recipe for leather britches at splendidtable.org.
And that is our show for the week.
Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.
The Splendid Table was created by Sally Swift and Lynn Rosetto-Casper.
It's made each week by technical producer Jennifer Lutke, producer Eric Romero and managing producer Sally Swift.
And hey, we want to hear what you think.
Send us your thoughts, your story ideas, and your cooking questions anytime.
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Thanks a lot.
I'm Francis Lam, and this is APM.
