Jody Eddy in Food & Wine:
More hereVisionary Charleston chef Sean Brock traces the origin of low-country dishes like hoppin' john and gumbo back to Senegal, emailing his restaurant cooks from Dakar so they can update his recipes in real time.
Image of Fati Ly and Sean Brock © Fredrika Stjärne
Chef Sean Brock is in Dakar, sorting cowpeas in the apartment of Senegalese home cook Fati Ly. Brock is wearing his "Make Cornbread, Not War" baseball cap. "You have to get me one of those," Ly tells him. "I love that message." The Charleston, South Carolina-based chef laughs at her request without looking up from the handful of speckled gray peas he's holding. He's mesmerized. "I've collected more than 300 varieties of peas back home, but I've never seen most of these," he says. "They were probably grown once in the South but got decimated by hurricanes and the Civil War."
