The Mind of a Chef (2012) s02e01 Episode Script
Southerners
In this episode, Chef Sean Brock explores the astonishing terroir of the South.
What's cool about a dish like this is they just have such a cool story.
Mississippi chef John Currence makes tamales.
Tamales were, you know, a great field food.
Atlanta chef Steven Satterfield makes a peanut and field pea salad.
You don't always have to do the traditional.
The Lee brothers explain deviled crabs.
I feel like it's ready for its comeback moment.
And from Nashville, Chef Erik Anderson shows Sean the oh-so-scaldingly painful ways of hot chicken.
I'm in physical pain right now.
I'm jarred.
When you say Southern food, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Fried chicken.
People just don't know any better.
A lot of people think that there's Southern food and there's the South, it's one thing, it's one cuisine.
But for us, we want to show how fresh, vibrant, exciting it can be through studying really the diversity of cultures throughout the South.
It's not just a plate of fried chicken.
So I'm here with Steven Satterfield, someone who I just think the world of.
Steven is kind of known for his work with Southern vegetables.
Tell us what you're going to make.
Yeah, we're going to do a little field pea and peanut salad with a little fresh cheese.
These are the first of the season green peanuts.
They're boiled peanuts.
Some people say "boled" peanuts.
Oh, look at that one.
That's a bonus, when you get four.
Yeah, it is.
And this is like a Southern caviar almost.
Yeah, it's our street food, you know? Yeah, exactly.
Like, you go to a baseball game here and this is what you sit and eat.
What I'm going to do is just take a little bit of each of these.
We'll start with the boiled peanuts, and some of these pretty white acres.
I love the butter peas.
You don't see these as often.
And I'm also going to take a little bit of this juice that's run off of the plate from the tomatoes and peppers.
This is really good flavor right here.
Barrel aged vinegar.
And then I've got the green peanut oil.
Can I taste that? Yeah, absolutely.
It tastes like the green bean flavor we were talking about.
Woah.
That's insane.
And then I'm going to take some of these chilis.
These are from one of your local farmers.
What are they, poblano? Yep.
I feel like we're taking some poetic license sometimes.
We get to play with these amazing ingredients, but we don't always have to do the traditional.
And then we're going to take some of these tomatoes.
I'm going to serve it on a little fresh cheese.
This is just a lemon ricotta.
So this cheese is made from some fantastic milk that we get from Celeste Albers.
She's just so in love with those cows, and just such an honor and privilege be able to make food from her passion.
And then I have some toasted, crushed peanuts that I tossed in chili oil, and then I have some basil from your garden.
So this one's cool.
This is my favorite one.
I have this one actually tattooed right here.
Is that the African? And this is the African, yeah.
Okay, and I love to use the flowers, the little buds.
People don't realize that you can eat the flowers, and they add so much flavor.
It's very pretty.
Nashville hot chicken is Nashville hot chicken.
You can really only get it there.
But, Prince's being the first, they put it on the map.
I'm not going to lie to you, man.
I'm a little nervous.
The hot, extra hot, that's making you nervous? I have to, I think.
I can stand hot food.
I've always loved habaneros and I've always loved spicy things.
But I was terrified walking into Prince's.
Completely terrified.
I like how there's a body waxing place beside it, so if you didn't torture yourself enough eating the hot chicken, you can go get the Brazilian.
Get your hair ripped off? Oh, here we go.
Okay, may I take your order, please? Am I crazy if I get the extra hot? That's suicidal chicken.
Great.
I've got to do it, but I'm nervous.
You want it hot? Extra hot.
Extra hot.
Okay.
I'm going to do the same thing, but leg and thigh.
Oh, wow.
I'd like a couple pickles as well.
Couple pickles.
And three gallons of milk.
Look at him he's sweating already.
I'm so nervous.
Just stop thinking about it.
My goodness.
Like, what's the worst that could happen? Just don't let it happen in here, okay? Fair enough, fair enough.
You would never, ever ask them how they make it or what the secret is.
I mean, you can't even look into the kitchen.
They have it guarded off.
Those secrets are so closely guarded that not for any amount of money or any amount of fame will they allow a camera into those kitchens.
Oh, woah.
Thank you.
All right, and I'm here to bear witness.
Are you going to watch this whole time? Of course.
My goodness.
Now, start out slow.
Don't even touch your skin.
It looks so delicious.
Say your prayers.
You didn't say your prayers.
Say your prayers.
That's hot.
It tastes so good, though.
How many extra hots do you sell in a day? It's not that many.
Not that many.
I'm actually doing all right so far.
This has ruined fried chicken for me though.
Like, I can't eat regular fried chicken anymore.
It's too boring.
No, I can't either.
This is not a boring chicken.
It's a passionate food.
I'm the opposite of bored.
Don't force yourself, now.
This is painful.
I think I'm hallucinating.
I love it.
Now, that chicken is going to get a little hotter.
I'm in physical pain right now.
I'm jarred.
I don't know what to do now.
I don't know what to do.
There's a lady of the evening, she would always bring her suitors by here before the final act.
Really? She always, always got it hot.
Yeah I know that one night, she just couldn't wait.
She went out, right there in front of that window, down on the hood of the car.
Come on.
No way, really? That's not going to happen when we leave here.
This is incredible.
You know it's not just, like, eating something.
It's like an experience, you know? It's like you bring someone here for, like, a memory.
It's not just like, "Hey, I'm hungry, lets go eat some hot chicken.
" It's like this is it's like going to a movie or something.
You know, it's like a full experience.
It's entertainment.
You remember it.
Especially the next morning.
I told someone today that I was coming here to get the extra hot.
They said go ahead and put the toilet paper in the freezer.
You're not eating hot chicken because you're starving to death.
You're eating it to push the bounds of reality.
Sometimes you need to stick your hand in the fire to remind you that it's hot, you know? So we're here with Erik Anderson, my buddy from the Catbird Seat here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Yesterday, for some crazy reason, we decided to take the hot chicken challenge, basically.
I've now successfully woken up twice with the anxiety because of the hot chicken.
Yesterday because I knew I was going to eat it.
You were nervous? Today because I knew I was going to get rid of it.
This is kind of a riff on hot chicken, where there's a crispy chicken skin.
The setup of the original hot chicken for Prince's is two pieces of squishy Wonderbread.
Which a lot of people think actually helps cool the burn down.
What they don't realize is it's catching all the chilis and grease and death that lies within the hot chicken.
Then, obviously, the hot chicken.
And then a big stack of dill pickles.
In place of the chicken we're using chicken skins.
These are pretty nice.
We just want to scrape a little bit of the fat off of them.
So at your place, every single guest eats this.
Originally we wanted to have people taste something that was familiar.
So that way you know where you are.
You're in Nashville, Tennessee.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're just going to season that a little bit.
Press them.
Like that? Perfect.
And then bake them in the oven and get them nice and crispy.
So now, all of sudden in the last, maybe three or four years, there's all these hot chicken places everywhere.
All over the place.
And everybody's serving hot chicken.
But at the end of the day, it's still kind of the same formula.
So basically your dish is that same sort of formula.
Yeah, it's all the flavors you'd get just kind of condensed into one bite, you know? So we're going to start with the crisp chicken skin.
A little bit of sorghum on it, just to add some sweetness, to kind of offset the heat.
This is a mixture of a little bit of cayenne and some Korean chili flakes.
Each Nashville hot chicken place has its own spice blend and And none of them are going to tell you what it is either.
No, you'll never know.
And then this is Wonderbread that we just puree.
It's one of my favorite things in the world.
You know, you grow up eating sandwiches, but there's just this flavor and this texture that you can only get from that plastic bag from the grocery store.
You can't You can't have a baloney sandwich on anything else.
.
No, look at that.
That's it.
So we just put a few dots kind of randomly on there like that.
And then dried dill weed with a little bit of citric acid and some salt.
And that's the dish, really.
It's like the Jetsons version of hot chicken.
Awesome.
I'm here with one of my best buddies in the whole entire universe, John Currence of Oxford, Mississippi, originally City Grocery, now Big Bad Breakfast, and about 72,000 other restaurants.
And we're going to do, basically, tamales 101.
For everybody who's seen corn husks in the grocery store forever and doesn't know why they're there, they're literally for this.
You start with just a masa that you cut in butter and lard, basically like you were making a biscuit dough.
So tell me about masa.
Masa is the Latin equivalent of flour.
It's dried corn that's ground into a flour consistency.
And just sort of spread it out to maybe about a half an inch thick.
And this is smoked mushrooms, some caramelized shallot.
Set that right in the center.
And then you roll your dough over to catch the other side.
That's going to be so good.
And this is how simple, really, it is.
You take the bottom end, fold it over on the seam.
We'll smear the tamale dough just over the end of it.
And what's cool about a dish like this is they just have such a cool story.
And the way that they're linked in with Southern food and agriculture is just fascinating to me.
Yeah.
You know, the story goes that it you know, after slavery was abolished, you know, there was a need for labor when it came to harvesting cotton in the Delta.
And so Latin migrant workers came through.
Corn was also prolific.
And so tamales were, you know, a great field food.
You know, they preserve well, so they're not going to spoil if you sit them out under a tree, you know, from seven in the morning, you know, until a lunch break.
And what's cool is it's like every sort of town in the South has that sort of dish.
Like, in Charleston it's Hopping John.
And that was, like, the dish that was eaten by the field workers, always.
And then all of a sudden someone in the big house tasted it and was like, ", that is good.
" Yeah.
And then it finds its way into the cuisine, and then we take credit for it.
Right.
How's that? Look at you.
You're practically a Mississippian now.
Well, let's put them in the steamer.
Perfect.
So here's the question.
We're at Husk.
How the hell have you not made tamales? Hey, man! It's a Mississippi thing.
I like it, though.
But there will now be tamales on the menu at Husk.
So these have been going for about 45 minutes.
It smells so amazing.
Take one of these out.
So you just crack them open.
And this is just some whipped cream.
And we just fold a little buttermilk in, and cilantro flower.
Awesome.
One of the things I love about traveling through the South and living in the South is these little hidden gems everywhere that are just you just would never think that there would be something incredibly delicious in there.
We'd heard about this place called Fishnets, so we had to go check that out.
Hey hon, can I help you? How many fried crabs do we want? Three.
Three.
Would you like garlic butter on them? Yes.
That sounds great.
It's good, it's really good.
All right, anything else? Do you have a job application? He said he'd be interested in taking a job on the line here.
You'd be interested? Well, yeah, I can get you an application if you want it.
You'd probably show us all up.
I'm sure you would.
Not me.
All right, let me get this going for you, hon.
Thank you.
These guys are actually still alive.
See the little legs moving? They're still alive.
And is that egg? This is a secret, but I can't tell you about that.
They do this thing there that I've never, ever seen before.
They take a live crab, kicking around, and they batter it while it's alive, and then throw it into the fryer, literally alive, and then they toss it in this fantastic, like, super redneck garlic butter.
All right, time to eat, fellows.
Here we go.
All right.
So what's so cool about this, like, fried crab tradition is that it sort of doesn't add up.
Like you're battering this hard shell.
What works out about it in the end just that as you pick apart the crab, the fried bits just inevitably go in your mouth.
Look at that.
So you crack the crab, reach in and grab this perfectly cooked piece of crabmeat, which now your fingers have all that crusty, delicious batter outside, and that butter, and you eat it.
Mmm.
Man, that's good.
It kind of makes the leg edible.
You can just crunch on it.
The legs are fantastic, actually.
I like to use the claw itself to pick out the meat.
Sort of perverse, but It's crazy.
This is my first fried crab experience.
What do you think? I love it.
I'm super happy about this.
The only thing I don't like about them is I can't get enough of them.
And that's what's so fun, is like, I've driven by that place 100 times.
Now it's in my rotation to bring people who have never been to the South.
I guess we're going to make deviled crabs, which is cool, because I've been thinking a lot about this dish lately.
We never see it on menus anymore in restaurants.
And I don't think you're allowed to serve it in the shell in a restaurant.
I remember as a kid just being fascinated by the fact that it was stuffed back into the shell.
Yeah, yeah.
Kind of evil looking.
First we're going to get some wet ingredients going.
We're going to start with some butter, some melted butter, go with some sherry, because sherry and crab I feel like are really a Charleston kind of pairing, like, very old school.
Some lemon juice.
And we're going to beat an egg into that.
And then what Matt is going to do is assemble the dryer ingredients.
I've got the crab.
And usually what we do is just make double sure there's no shell, because that's embarrassing in Charleston.
There is more devil in our recipe, which is jalapeno, which is maybe not so traditional for Charleston, but we love it.
Scallions, same thing, a little bit of heat.
Breadcrumbs, panko.
There's a nice innovation.
Oh, the grated egg.
The grated egg.
It's really a nice, nice touch.
You know, it's pure protein.
It kind of looks like crab.
Yeah you're right.
And then we marry it with the wet ingredients.
And that's it.
Just about the right texture.
And then it's just packing up.
Did you eat deviled crab, though, growing up in the Mountain South? I mean Only the really bad, frozen ones that taste like the freezer.
We're going to just sprinkle cayenne pepper.
That looks so awesome, man.
I can't wait to make these at Husk.
Oh, and there's usually a finishing touch of breadcrumbs.
And let's not forget a few pats of butter.
I don't think I've had devilled crab in probably ten years.
And it's that kind of thing that's kind of, like, out of fashion, sort of like, you know, fish in parchment, or sundried tomatoes, but I feel like it's ready for its, like, comeback moment.
Actually, I carry a notebook, and I've always got ideas.
And for some reason the other day deviled crabs just popped into my head, because I've never really seen anybody do it anywhere.
So I thought, "How can we make, like, a beautiful, sort of refined thing?" And now all I've got to do is just follow your recipe.
Awesome.
So we going to eat this, or no? Nice.
Yeah, delicious.
Nice spice.
This doesn't taste like the ones that I ate when I was a kid.
No freezer burn? No.
I love it.
Good.
I'm here with Lisa Donovan, the pastry chef of Husk restaurant.
We're going to make one of my favorite things to eat, buttermilk pie.
Buttermilk pie.
So really all you're trying to do is get it nice and tight in there, and then you just trim your overhang.
Nobody loves to trim the overhang, but you've just got to do it sometimes.
The next step is to crimp it.
We have this tradition of chess pies and transparent pies, and shoo-fly pies, and buttermilk pies that you make when there's not an abundance of fruit, or you're out of preserves.
I love them all.
Every pie crust needs to go in the refrigerator.
So while you're making your filling, you want to get your pie crust cold.
So we'll do our eggs.
All this sugar.
My favorite thing about sugar pies is it's just a one-bowl deal.
Yeah, it's easy to make, but if you don't have good buttermilk, or you don't have good eggs That's right.
If you don't have a good pie crust, you're wasting your time.
That was flour and a little bit of salt.
Oh, butter.
And that's it.
It's that simple.
You bake at 375.
Mm-hmm.
How do you know when it's done? Your middle will be set, but still a bit jiggly.
And I have lots of references to what kind of jiggle.
Right.
I was about to ask you.
What kind of jiggle are we talking about? Are we talking about the jiggle I saw at Donk's the other day? Yes.
So it's all cooled off.
And now we can eat some pie.
Awesome.
I love the top, how it gets crunchy.
Mmm, me, too.
That's the best part.
Oh, look at that.
Perfectly set up.
Look at that jiggle.
Look at that jiggle.
Sir Mix-A-Lot would love this pie.
There we go.
My favorite, favorite sugar pie, ever.
Awesome.
I'm very, very lucky.
I'm surrounded by incredible friends that are incredible chefs throughout the South.
All these people tucked away in all these little cities that are cooking Southern food, but doing it their way based on what they've experienced in life.
That's what makes eating in the South, cooking in the South, so exciting right now.
Each time you sit down at their restaurants and eat a plate of food, you experience their story.
What's cool about a dish like this is they just have such a cool story.
Mississippi chef John Currence makes tamales.
Tamales were, you know, a great field food.
Atlanta chef Steven Satterfield makes a peanut and field pea salad.
You don't always have to do the traditional.
The Lee brothers explain deviled crabs.
I feel like it's ready for its comeback moment.
And from Nashville, Chef Erik Anderson shows Sean the oh-so-scaldingly painful ways of hot chicken.
I'm in physical pain right now.
I'm jarred.
When you say Southern food, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Fried chicken.
People just don't know any better.
A lot of people think that there's Southern food and there's the South, it's one thing, it's one cuisine.
But for us, we want to show how fresh, vibrant, exciting it can be through studying really the diversity of cultures throughout the South.
It's not just a plate of fried chicken.
So I'm here with Steven Satterfield, someone who I just think the world of.
Steven is kind of known for his work with Southern vegetables.
Tell us what you're going to make.
Yeah, we're going to do a little field pea and peanut salad with a little fresh cheese.
These are the first of the season green peanuts.
They're boiled peanuts.
Some people say "boled" peanuts.
Oh, look at that one.
That's a bonus, when you get four.
Yeah, it is.
And this is like a Southern caviar almost.
Yeah, it's our street food, you know? Yeah, exactly.
Like, you go to a baseball game here and this is what you sit and eat.
What I'm going to do is just take a little bit of each of these.
We'll start with the boiled peanuts, and some of these pretty white acres.
I love the butter peas.
You don't see these as often.
And I'm also going to take a little bit of this juice that's run off of the plate from the tomatoes and peppers.
This is really good flavor right here.
Barrel aged vinegar.
And then I've got the green peanut oil.
Can I taste that? Yeah, absolutely.
It tastes like the green bean flavor we were talking about.
Woah.
That's insane.
And then I'm going to take some of these chilis.
These are from one of your local farmers.
What are they, poblano? Yep.
I feel like we're taking some poetic license sometimes.
We get to play with these amazing ingredients, but we don't always have to do the traditional.
And then we're going to take some of these tomatoes.
I'm going to serve it on a little fresh cheese.
This is just a lemon ricotta.
So this cheese is made from some fantastic milk that we get from Celeste Albers.
She's just so in love with those cows, and just such an honor and privilege be able to make food from her passion.
And then I have some toasted, crushed peanuts that I tossed in chili oil, and then I have some basil from your garden.
So this one's cool.
This is my favorite one.
I have this one actually tattooed right here.
Is that the African? And this is the African, yeah.
Okay, and I love to use the flowers, the little buds.
People don't realize that you can eat the flowers, and they add so much flavor.
It's very pretty.
Nashville hot chicken is Nashville hot chicken.
You can really only get it there.
But, Prince's being the first, they put it on the map.
I'm not going to lie to you, man.
I'm a little nervous.
The hot, extra hot, that's making you nervous? I have to, I think.
I can stand hot food.
I've always loved habaneros and I've always loved spicy things.
But I was terrified walking into Prince's.
Completely terrified.
I like how there's a body waxing place beside it, so if you didn't torture yourself enough eating the hot chicken, you can go get the Brazilian.
Get your hair ripped off? Oh, here we go.
Okay, may I take your order, please? Am I crazy if I get the extra hot? That's suicidal chicken.
Great.
I've got to do it, but I'm nervous.
You want it hot? Extra hot.
Extra hot.
Okay.
I'm going to do the same thing, but leg and thigh.
Oh, wow.
I'd like a couple pickles as well.
Couple pickles.
And three gallons of milk.
Look at him he's sweating already.
I'm so nervous.
Just stop thinking about it.
My goodness.
Like, what's the worst that could happen? Just don't let it happen in here, okay? Fair enough, fair enough.
You would never, ever ask them how they make it or what the secret is.
I mean, you can't even look into the kitchen.
They have it guarded off.
Those secrets are so closely guarded that not for any amount of money or any amount of fame will they allow a camera into those kitchens.
Oh, woah.
Thank you.
All right, and I'm here to bear witness.
Are you going to watch this whole time? Of course.
My goodness.
Now, start out slow.
Don't even touch your skin.
It looks so delicious.
Say your prayers.
You didn't say your prayers.
Say your prayers.
That's hot.
It tastes so good, though.
How many extra hots do you sell in a day? It's not that many.
Not that many.
I'm actually doing all right so far.
This has ruined fried chicken for me though.
Like, I can't eat regular fried chicken anymore.
It's too boring.
No, I can't either.
This is not a boring chicken.
It's a passionate food.
I'm the opposite of bored.
Don't force yourself, now.
This is painful.
I think I'm hallucinating.
I love it.
Now, that chicken is going to get a little hotter.
I'm in physical pain right now.
I'm jarred.
I don't know what to do now.
I don't know what to do.
There's a lady of the evening, she would always bring her suitors by here before the final act.
Really? She always, always got it hot.
Yeah I know that one night, she just couldn't wait.
She went out, right there in front of that window, down on the hood of the car.
Come on.
No way, really? That's not going to happen when we leave here.
This is incredible.
You know it's not just, like, eating something.
It's like an experience, you know? It's like you bring someone here for, like, a memory.
It's not just like, "Hey, I'm hungry, lets go eat some hot chicken.
" It's like this is it's like going to a movie or something.
You know, it's like a full experience.
It's entertainment.
You remember it.
Especially the next morning.
I told someone today that I was coming here to get the extra hot.
They said go ahead and put the toilet paper in the freezer.
You're not eating hot chicken because you're starving to death.
You're eating it to push the bounds of reality.
Sometimes you need to stick your hand in the fire to remind you that it's hot, you know? So we're here with Erik Anderson, my buddy from the Catbird Seat here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Yesterday, for some crazy reason, we decided to take the hot chicken challenge, basically.
I've now successfully woken up twice with the anxiety because of the hot chicken.
Yesterday because I knew I was going to eat it.
You were nervous? Today because I knew I was going to get rid of it.
This is kind of a riff on hot chicken, where there's a crispy chicken skin.
The setup of the original hot chicken for Prince's is two pieces of squishy Wonderbread.
Which a lot of people think actually helps cool the burn down.
What they don't realize is it's catching all the chilis and grease and death that lies within the hot chicken.
Then, obviously, the hot chicken.
And then a big stack of dill pickles.
In place of the chicken we're using chicken skins.
These are pretty nice.
We just want to scrape a little bit of the fat off of them.
So at your place, every single guest eats this.
Originally we wanted to have people taste something that was familiar.
So that way you know where you are.
You're in Nashville, Tennessee.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're just going to season that a little bit.
Press them.
Like that? Perfect.
And then bake them in the oven and get them nice and crispy.
So now, all of sudden in the last, maybe three or four years, there's all these hot chicken places everywhere.
All over the place.
And everybody's serving hot chicken.
But at the end of the day, it's still kind of the same formula.
So basically your dish is that same sort of formula.
Yeah, it's all the flavors you'd get just kind of condensed into one bite, you know? So we're going to start with the crisp chicken skin.
A little bit of sorghum on it, just to add some sweetness, to kind of offset the heat.
This is a mixture of a little bit of cayenne and some Korean chili flakes.
Each Nashville hot chicken place has its own spice blend and And none of them are going to tell you what it is either.
No, you'll never know.
And then this is Wonderbread that we just puree.
It's one of my favorite things in the world.
You know, you grow up eating sandwiches, but there's just this flavor and this texture that you can only get from that plastic bag from the grocery store.
You can't You can't have a baloney sandwich on anything else.
.
No, look at that.
That's it.
So we just put a few dots kind of randomly on there like that.
And then dried dill weed with a little bit of citric acid and some salt.
And that's the dish, really.
It's like the Jetsons version of hot chicken.
Awesome.
I'm here with one of my best buddies in the whole entire universe, John Currence of Oxford, Mississippi, originally City Grocery, now Big Bad Breakfast, and about 72,000 other restaurants.
And we're going to do, basically, tamales 101.
For everybody who's seen corn husks in the grocery store forever and doesn't know why they're there, they're literally for this.
You start with just a masa that you cut in butter and lard, basically like you were making a biscuit dough.
So tell me about masa.
Masa is the Latin equivalent of flour.
It's dried corn that's ground into a flour consistency.
And just sort of spread it out to maybe about a half an inch thick.
And this is smoked mushrooms, some caramelized shallot.
Set that right in the center.
And then you roll your dough over to catch the other side.
That's going to be so good.
And this is how simple, really, it is.
You take the bottom end, fold it over on the seam.
We'll smear the tamale dough just over the end of it.
And what's cool about a dish like this is they just have such a cool story.
And the way that they're linked in with Southern food and agriculture is just fascinating to me.
Yeah.
You know, the story goes that it you know, after slavery was abolished, you know, there was a need for labor when it came to harvesting cotton in the Delta.
And so Latin migrant workers came through.
Corn was also prolific.
And so tamales were, you know, a great field food.
You know, they preserve well, so they're not going to spoil if you sit them out under a tree, you know, from seven in the morning, you know, until a lunch break.
And what's cool is it's like every sort of town in the South has that sort of dish.
Like, in Charleston it's Hopping John.
And that was, like, the dish that was eaten by the field workers, always.
And then all of a sudden someone in the big house tasted it and was like, ", that is good.
" Yeah.
And then it finds its way into the cuisine, and then we take credit for it.
Right.
How's that? Look at you.
You're practically a Mississippian now.
Well, let's put them in the steamer.
Perfect.
So here's the question.
We're at Husk.
How the hell have you not made tamales? Hey, man! It's a Mississippi thing.
I like it, though.
But there will now be tamales on the menu at Husk.
So these have been going for about 45 minutes.
It smells so amazing.
Take one of these out.
So you just crack them open.
And this is just some whipped cream.
And we just fold a little buttermilk in, and cilantro flower.
Awesome.
One of the things I love about traveling through the South and living in the South is these little hidden gems everywhere that are just you just would never think that there would be something incredibly delicious in there.
We'd heard about this place called Fishnets, so we had to go check that out.
Hey hon, can I help you? How many fried crabs do we want? Three.
Three.
Would you like garlic butter on them? Yes.
That sounds great.
It's good, it's really good.
All right, anything else? Do you have a job application? He said he'd be interested in taking a job on the line here.
You'd be interested? Well, yeah, I can get you an application if you want it.
You'd probably show us all up.
I'm sure you would.
Not me.
All right, let me get this going for you, hon.
Thank you.
These guys are actually still alive.
See the little legs moving? They're still alive.
And is that egg? This is a secret, but I can't tell you about that.
They do this thing there that I've never, ever seen before.
They take a live crab, kicking around, and they batter it while it's alive, and then throw it into the fryer, literally alive, and then they toss it in this fantastic, like, super redneck garlic butter.
All right, time to eat, fellows.
Here we go.
All right.
So what's so cool about this, like, fried crab tradition is that it sort of doesn't add up.
Like you're battering this hard shell.
What works out about it in the end just that as you pick apart the crab, the fried bits just inevitably go in your mouth.
Look at that.
So you crack the crab, reach in and grab this perfectly cooked piece of crabmeat, which now your fingers have all that crusty, delicious batter outside, and that butter, and you eat it.
Mmm.
Man, that's good.
It kind of makes the leg edible.
You can just crunch on it.
The legs are fantastic, actually.
I like to use the claw itself to pick out the meat.
Sort of perverse, but It's crazy.
This is my first fried crab experience.
What do you think? I love it.
I'm super happy about this.
The only thing I don't like about them is I can't get enough of them.
And that's what's so fun, is like, I've driven by that place 100 times.
Now it's in my rotation to bring people who have never been to the South.
I guess we're going to make deviled crabs, which is cool, because I've been thinking a lot about this dish lately.
We never see it on menus anymore in restaurants.
And I don't think you're allowed to serve it in the shell in a restaurant.
I remember as a kid just being fascinated by the fact that it was stuffed back into the shell.
Yeah, yeah.
Kind of evil looking.
First we're going to get some wet ingredients going.
We're going to start with some butter, some melted butter, go with some sherry, because sherry and crab I feel like are really a Charleston kind of pairing, like, very old school.
Some lemon juice.
And we're going to beat an egg into that.
And then what Matt is going to do is assemble the dryer ingredients.
I've got the crab.
And usually what we do is just make double sure there's no shell, because that's embarrassing in Charleston.
There is more devil in our recipe, which is jalapeno, which is maybe not so traditional for Charleston, but we love it.
Scallions, same thing, a little bit of heat.
Breadcrumbs, panko.
There's a nice innovation.
Oh, the grated egg.
The grated egg.
It's really a nice, nice touch.
You know, it's pure protein.
It kind of looks like crab.
Yeah you're right.
And then we marry it with the wet ingredients.
And that's it.
Just about the right texture.
And then it's just packing up.
Did you eat deviled crab, though, growing up in the Mountain South? I mean Only the really bad, frozen ones that taste like the freezer.
We're going to just sprinkle cayenne pepper.
That looks so awesome, man.
I can't wait to make these at Husk.
Oh, and there's usually a finishing touch of breadcrumbs.
And let's not forget a few pats of butter.
I don't think I've had devilled crab in probably ten years.
And it's that kind of thing that's kind of, like, out of fashion, sort of like, you know, fish in parchment, or sundried tomatoes, but I feel like it's ready for its, like, comeback moment.
Actually, I carry a notebook, and I've always got ideas.
And for some reason the other day deviled crabs just popped into my head, because I've never really seen anybody do it anywhere.
So I thought, "How can we make, like, a beautiful, sort of refined thing?" And now all I've got to do is just follow your recipe.
Awesome.
So we going to eat this, or no? Nice.
Yeah, delicious.
Nice spice.
This doesn't taste like the ones that I ate when I was a kid.
No freezer burn? No.
I love it.
Good.
I'm here with Lisa Donovan, the pastry chef of Husk restaurant.
We're going to make one of my favorite things to eat, buttermilk pie.
Buttermilk pie.
So really all you're trying to do is get it nice and tight in there, and then you just trim your overhang.
Nobody loves to trim the overhang, but you've just got to do it sometimes.
The next step is to crimp it.
We have this tradition of chess pies and transparent pies, and shoo-fly pies, and buttermilk pies that you make when there's not an abundance of fruit, or you're out of preserves.
I love them all.
Every pie crust needs to go in the refrigerator.
So while you're making your filling, you want to get your pie crust cold.
So we'll do our eggs.
All this sugar.
My favorite thing about sugar pies is it's just a one-bowl deal.
Yeah, it's easy to make, but if you don't have good buttermilk, or you don't have good eggs That's right.
If you don't have a good pie crust, you're wasting your time.
That was flour and a little bit of salt.
Oh, butter.
And that's it.
It's that simple.
You bake at 375.
Mm-hmm.
How do you know when it's done? Your middle will be set, but still a bit jiggly.
And I have lots of references to what kind of jiggle.
Right.
I was about to ask you.
What kind of jiggle are we talking about? Are we talking about the jiggle I saw at Donk's the other day? Yes.
So it's all cooled off.
And now we can eat some pie.
Awesome.
I love the top, how it gets crunchy.
Mmm, me, too.
That's the best part.
Oh, look at that.
Perfectly set up.
Look at that jiggle.
Look at that jiggle.
Sir Mix-A-Lot would love this pie.
There we go.
My favorite, favorite sugar pie, ever.
Awesome.
I'm very, very lucky.
I'm surrounded by incredible friends that are incredible chefs throughout the South.
All these people tucked away in all these little cities that are cooking Southern food, but doing it their way based on what they've experienced in life.
That's what makes eating in the South, cooking in the South, so exciting right now.
Each time you sit down at their restaurants and eat a plate of food, you experience their story.