Cook It Raw

West Ashley will be the epicenter of the world’s avant garde cuisine scene for the next week, as chefs from all over the globe learn receive an intensive introduction to the “foodways” and products of the Lowcountry.
Beginning Sunday, 28 internationally known chefs from all over the world will convene at Middleton Plantation for a four-day immersion into the Lowcountry’s distinctive cuisine, topography, and cultural history.
They will be joined in the process by a host of local chefs with the result being, in part, creating a final meal, where each dish is a rumination of what has inspired them during their stay.
The chefs are from all corners of the world, pushing boundaries of cuisine whether they led molecular cooking by pioneering techniques like foams and spherification, as Albert Adria of Tickets and 41° has accomplished in Spain.
Or combined techniques like sous vide with the reincarnation of heirloom grains and vegetables, as Sean Brock of Charleston’s Husk and McCrady’s has done.
International writers and food observers will also be on hand, from magazines like Time, to chronicle the events, which includes trips to local plantations, alligator hunts, shrimping expedition, foraging for wild veggies and herbs, and a down-home barbecue.
Cooked up by founder and director Alessandro Porcelli, the Cook It Raw gatherings have been held five times over the past four years, with the rising star chefs convening in far-flung places like Lapland, Finland, and Collio, Italy, and Sulwaki, Poland, to immerse themselves in a distinctive cuisine.
Cook It Raw development manager Arlene Stein said that Porcelli had scouted out the Charleston area several times, and originally planned on a combo road-trip gathering between the Holy City and New Orleans. But, when struck by the wealth of food culture in the Lowcountry, he decided to make Charleston a stand-alone event.
Stein said that what really captured Porcelli’s imagination was the story of Carolina Gold, the heirloom grain grown here years ago as a cash crop that fell off dinner tables for decades, only to be enjoying a renaissance thanks to committed local growers like those at Anson Mills and Middleton Place.
Porcelli saw the rice as a through-line, linking the history, politics, and culture of the Lowcountry, as it tied together the pre-emancipation slave culture of West Africa to the bounty of the land and cuisine of the region at large. This “confluence of cultures” drove Porcelli to champion Charleston.
Luckily for Cook It Raw, the Charleston food renaissance had already been underway for several decades, more than paralleling the rice, as old guard chefs like Frank Lee of Slightly North of Broad and a generation of chefs who dot the national cuisine landscape from major New York City restaurants and on to television.
Stein said her organization has leaned hard on locals for guidance, expertise and support. One of the local chefs who has jumped at the chance to be involved was Chris Stewart, chef and co-owner of the Glass Onion in West Ashley.
Stewart is helping to facilitate a deer hunt on Sunday, and then will take some of the chefs shrimping on Wednesday on boats with baiting poles and traditional cast nets, and he’s introducing them to the gentlemen who supplies his restaurant with local stone crabs.
Stewart recently hosted Porcelli and some of his fellow organizers — fried oysters served on Carolina Bay hoppin’ john, pork cheek chili with red beans, whole crispy chicken leg with garden salad, red wine braised duck over Anson Mills grits with a sea island chicken egg from Celeste Farms.
Keeping it local, according to Stewart, is one of the most important discussion points he expects will be made at the gatherings. “It may be great to have some fancy lettuce in the middle of winter from California on your plate, but the amount of fuel that’s burned to get it there isn’t,” he said.
Local food blogger Charles Powell, who has received more than 1 million hits on his Foodmancing the Girl portal, is excited to hear that all these cutting edge chefs are coming.
“I ate at 41° a couple of years ago,” said Powell. “I had a ‘deconstructed octopus’ as a salad, with the octopus presented as a foam.”
Most of the Cook It Raw gathering is closed to the public, and the one open to everyone — a barbecue roast at Bowens Island— sold out quickly.
“I missed out on getting tickets,” lamented food writer and boiled peanut entrepreneur Matt Lee, who expected to sample some dishes outside of his normal comfort food range.
Barber said that one of the chefs has already been over, digging his own pit. And as the chefs hail from all over the world, their palate will extend past red and mustard sauces, he said.
“They kinda are gonna do their own interpretation with their own ingredients, but have a barbecue theme to it,” said Bowens Island owner Robert Barber, who will serve up some his trademark steamed oysters.
Raw’s time in town will end up informing not only the chefs, but the world, including Charlestonians, as to the wealth of culinary treasures in the Lowcountry – from the fresh seafood and amazing vegetables, available hunting lands, sweetgrass mussels, stone crab, heirloom pigs, black guinea hens, marsh birds, and so on.
For more information about Cook It Raw, visit the website at www.cookitraw.org.