Finding a Lost Strain of Rice, and Clues to Slave Cooking<br />“It’s the most historically significant African diaspora grain in the Western Hemisphere,” said David S. Shields, a professor at the University of South Carolina<br />and chairman of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, who works with Mr. Dennis on historical culinary projects and was with him that rainy day in Trinidad.<br />“If we can bring this back,” he said, “the historical back story could deepen the development<br />of African diaspora food in America and better tell the real story of Southern food.”<br />At another rice symposium held by the Carolina Rice Foundation in April, Mr. Dennis prepared hill rice for everyone.<br />Mr. Dennis had heard about hill rice — also known as upland red bearded rice or Moruga Hill rice — through the culinary organization Slow Food USA<br />and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, the group that brought back Carolina Gold in the early 2000s.<br />There is no one as fanatic about Southern heirloom grains as Mr. Roberts, whose South Carolina<br />company led the revival of Carolina Gold rice and several other Southern heirloom grains.<br />Dr. Shields, who is part of a global effort to find new ways to grow rice on dry land, began his research, and realized<br />that the Trinidad hill rice might be linked to the missing American rice, which in turn could be traced all the way back to the West African rice fields.<br />Last summer, Mr. Wilson invited Mr. Roberts to discuss the rice alongside Michael Twitty, a culinary historian<br />and the author of ”The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South” at a Smithsonian event.
