In what has become an inviolate tradition over the six years we've shared, Glenn, Glenn's daughter Ansley, and I greet the New Year together in Charleston. For two of those years Glenn and I occupied a small Federal house downtown—contemptuously called the "wosh" house by our wealthy neighbors—but the remaining have found us on Folly in one musty beach rental or other. Folly plays the quirky, shabby, less fortunate sister to Charleston's small family of island resorts, and it is Glenn's favorite place on earth. Besides offering miles of unfettered sand and surf, Folly offers blissfully little else. Over the winter months, but for a sprinkle of year-round residents, it can be nearly deserted.

Here's what happens. We arrive mid-afternoon on New Year's Eve, open the house and poke around, then haul in the essentials: down pillows and cozy blankets; groceries; French press coffee pot and grinder, a bottle of Clorox Clean-Up, two or three decent knives, and a full arsenal of All-Clad. Yep, it's true. We buy 2 pounds of local shrimp at Crosby's and a bag of ice at Bert's, then take a long twilight walk on the beach, and get ourselves polished up for a trip into town.

New Year's Eve dinner happens downtown at FIG every year. This, too, has become sacred tradition. The menu, exquisitely crafted by chef/owner Mike Lata—and listing southerly in all the right directions—might stir a lightly heated row about the dessert selections. We inscribe New Year's wishes for each person present–as in "I really wish you would stop fill-in-the-blank, Daddy,"—and resolutions for ourselves, on scrap paper, and read them aloud over cheese. (Cheese stands alone!) Resolutions from the past New Year's Eve, too, are produced, and noted with mild irony. We resolve to improve. The room is sparkly and beautiful, adorned with leggy blondes in long earrings, flowing hair, and short, backless gowns. Their laughter trips across the room like tinkly chimes. We depart before the little hats come out.

Back on Folly, Glenn and Ansley might avail themselves of the state's lax fireworks laws with a half-hearted display of pops and sizzles out near the road. If we're lucky, everyone stays up until midnight.

New Year's Day. What has, in the past, seemed a bare, melancholy landscape, dawns with the scent of smoky ham broth and hot, fresh coffee. Glenn is up making his traditional New Year's Day lowcountry brunch of good fortune! It's his drop-dead, on-the-mark cooking skill he honed working on a shrimp trawler out of Shem Creek, back in the day. I might be asked to peel shrimp and make shrimp stock, but everything else belongs to Glenn. Around 11 we feast and toast the New Year anew. We eat blazing hot baby white shrimp and grits, velvety Sea Island Red Pea Gravy and Carolina gold rice, sweet braised collard greens, and crunchy skillet cornbread dripping with sorghum butter. We drink Champagne. It is the ultimate traditional and simple meal, one that can rouse even the fair Ansley from her lair. Pleasantly revived, we again take to the beach.

We invite all of you to prepare this wonderful, traditional meal for your own New Year's Day feast—but heed this advice: to ensure good health and fortune throughout the coming year it is essential that the first foods to pass your lips on New Year's Day be braised collards, Carolina gold rice, and red pea gravy. Consider it a gift of Charleston-inspired good luck from our family to yours.

Kay and Glenn

Beyond their associations with health and fortune, this small compendium of Antebellum Charleston dishes reflects a creolization of the local cuisine, a blending of food influences that emanates from regions geographically distinct from that in which they are celebrated. Taken together, these foods become foundation dishes for the fabled cuisine known as the Carolina Rice Kitchen. We call it culinary poetry.

Sea Island Red Pea Gravy and Carolina Gold Rice

The first rice farmers in Charlestowne territory were Italian and their influence has been enduring: Charleston's sense of hospitality remains stubbornly associated with rice to the present.

Sea Island Red Peas, which predate black-eyed peas in the local preparation of Hoppin' John, are African in origin. Their presence on the table portends good fortune for the coming year because it means the prior crop was harvested without incident—unscathed, that is, by drought or hurricane.

As a composite, red pea gravy and Carolina gold rice or gold rice grits create a powerfully satisfying dish: the pea gravy flows sweet and smoky into the rice, which is firm, supple, buttery, and biting back a bit with black pepper. We'll kick the heat up a couple of notches with some homemade pickled jalapeņos—if we've had time to make them before.

Braised Collard Greens

Collards, another Charleston first food of the New Year, originated in Germany. Settlers of the Carolina territory in the 17th century brought German farmers to the lowcountry to tend and run their vast farms. We consider collards to be the most elegant braise-worthy green: fleshy and sweet, with subtly cruciferous tones. Use our recipe for Collards and Cornmeal Dumplings without the dumplings.

Shrimp and Grits

The ingredients represent land, sea, and safe journey. Locals call it Shrimp and Hominy in honor of their debt to Native Americans who brought this dish into being. We doubt any of you needs to be convinced of the simple, warming appeal and flavor dimension of shrimp and grits. Our recipe is, we think, one of the very best out there–an assertion we feel confident in uttering based on the blizzard of positive comments from friends and customers who prepare and love this dish.

Black Skillet Cornbread with Sorghum Butter

Cornbread, another centuries deep Native American food, nearly lost its identity during the home baking mix upheaval after 1950 when its fundamental ingredient–very coarse cornmeal–was sifted away, and its vessel–a smoking hot black skillet–turned into a cake pan. Black skillet cornbread is one of the easiest to prepare of all our recipes and truly unique in its capacity to please and nourish.

Very roughly speaking, sorghum is to the South as maple syrup is to the North: a dark, sweet seductive syrup with warbling, smoky notes you want to pour on everything. Of course, unlike maple syrup, sorghum syrup is processed from a crop—an important crop, as a matter of fact, in the rotation of cereal grains. Sorghum works to suppress nematodes (nasty pests) under the soil, and keeps future plants healthy. Its secondary role is to provide many delightful iterations of sorghum syrup, some so rich that none spills from an inverted container. Great sorghum is said to have the flavor diversity of great wine: a persistent floral, citrusy tang that dances above the predictable caramel and molasses flavor—and a bright mineral balance. The best sorghums, and we mean few and far between, are evaporated over live fire in an open black iron kettle. Made with good sorghum, sorghum butter is surpassingly magnetic in its appeal– and irresistible on hot cornbread.

Here are a couple of good sorghum producers: Sandhill Farm and Townsend Sorghum Mill.

To make sorghum butter, Whip up 2 to 4 ounces of soft, unsalted European style butter. Add half as much sorghum by weight as butter, and a pinch of salt. Blend well.

The very best for 2010, y'all, and Good Food!
     
ANSON MILLS - 1922-C Gervais Street - Columbia, South Carolina 29201
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