Anson Mills Summer Travels . . . Backward

Now that our Gourdseed corn is laid by and the gold rice we planted is ripening in the fields, hot August afternoons find us dozing under a ceiling fan on the porch of our Carolina beach house, traveling backward in time to discover historic foods of the Old and New Worlds—foods that will play well together on a table spangled with summer light.

We set sail from Old Spain, with conquistadors bound for the Americas, to track the odyssey of Spanish flatbread traditions and a white wheat, called Sonora, into central Mexico and then on to California. We gather Sonora seeds from a California field and plant them in South Carolina, along with an American heirloom bread wheat called Red Fife. We mill, then blend the two wheats to send their flavors soaring and enhance their baking properties. We take this new flour, Trigo Fuerte, to our beach house and make from-scratch wheat tortillas and quesadillas. Visit our Web site to order Trigo Fuerte, and use it to make fresh Flour Tortillas for our Roasted Shallot and Tomato Quesadillas with Lime-Cilantro Cream.

In a Native American coastal community in the 15th century, we find hominy corn and masa. We taste native corn flatbread cradling just-caught fish and searing, hot green chiles. We follow America’s native cuisine and the trail of its ingredients as they wind through a European settlement and arrive, almost intact, in the 21st century. On the way, in the 19th century in the Appalachian Mountains, we watch the rise and fall of a yellow hominy corn called Henry Moore. Taken by its charms, we grow, harvest, and dry this corn ourselves before bringing it to our beach house, where we make—for our first time—fresh masa. From this masa we press and griddle up rustic Masa Tortillas with a deep yellow color and a flavor that astounds us. We chop cabbage, roast tomatillos and chiles, fry fish, and dive into one of the most appealing and enduring foods that we know: Fish Tacos.

A carriage tour of late 18th-century Southern plantations puts us within striking distance of the ultimate pimento cheese and its time-honored companion, Southern wheat crisps. We taste aged farmhouse cheddars, hoop cheese, farmer’s cheese, potted cheese—and select the finest. We pick sun-ripened sweet red peppers from the garden. From Virginia to Alabama, we visit wheat fields and discover Red May, the perfect crisping wheat, and mill it for our Colonial-Style Whole Grain Wheat Flour. We haul these ingredients home and make an unrivaled Pimento Cheese and Red May Crisps. The cheese and crisps—and a bottle of creamy champagne—accompany us on a choppy midday sail along the coast.

Our final journey takes us to the port of Savannah in the 18th century. We bring blushingly ripe Georgia peaches from orchards on the Sea Islands back to our kitchen. For an afternoon gathering three centuries later, we create a Peach Crisp, topped with a streusel made from our Graham Flour. As the crisp bakes, it fills our house with intoxicating aromas, and through the oven window we watch it bubble and brown to perfection: Timeless and divine, the crisp is a study in textures and a celebration of Southern flavors.
We are witness to the rebirth of classic Southern cuisine the way it was meant to be.

We invite you to join us.