USC Times February 2014

USCTIMES

FEBRUARY 2014 / VOL. 25, NO.2

DIG IN! Presenting our first-ever food issue, complete with chef profiles, helpful hints and great conversation.

WHAT’S INSIDE Flavor Profiles

Foodography

An 11-Course Meal

USC alumni spice up local dining scene, page 4

Three professors discuss food scholarship — plus pictures to prove it, page 8

HRSM’s Culinary & Wine Institute turns out master chefs, page 11

USC TIMES / STAFF

FROM THE EDITOR

USC Times is published 10 times a year for the faculty and staff of the University of South Carolina by the Division of Communications.

Managing editor Craig Brandhorst Designers Philip Caoile Michelle Hindle Riley Contributors Peggy Binette Frenché Brewer Glenn Hare Thom Harman Chris Horn Page Ivey Steven Powell Megan Sexton Jeff Stensland Liz McCarthy Photographer Kim Truett Printer USC Printing Services Campus correspondents Patti McGrath, Aiken Candace Brasseur, Beaufort Cortney Easterling, Greenville Shana Dry, Lancaster Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie Misty Hatfield, Sumter Annie Smith, Union Tammy Whaley, Upstate Jay Darby, Palmetto College Submissions Did you know you can submit photos, stories or ideas for future issues of USC Times? Share your story by emailing or calling Craig Brandhorst at craigb1@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3681.

The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation or veteran status.

YOU GOTTA EAT

Lunch break, coffee break, happy hour, dinner hour — eating and drinking represent a chance to step away from the often-hectic business of our lives, if only for a moment, as we fortify ourselves for whatever comes next. Whether we gather for an elaborate supper with family and friends or just duck around the corner for a quick snack, these breaks punctuate our days, and we look forward to them with singular relish.

At USC Times we’re as hungry as anybody, maybe more so. Since unveiling our redesign last month, we’ve bounced around all sorts of new ideas in an effort to concoct another winning recipe.

It’s with our stomachs on our minds, then, that we serve up our first-ever food issue, complete with everything from soft cheese to hard science to food fights, flaming pasta, a spicy Thai birdbath and some witty banter. The feast begins on page 3 (following the usual news and previews) and continues until, well … until you’re stuffed.

For starters, we offer a trio of alumni profiles, focusing on a few local restaurateurs who call Carolina their alma mater. But these aren’t the only Gamecocks doing cool things in Columbia’s kitchens, not by a longshot. So if you like what you see, let us know. Maybe we’ll prep another food issue next year.

Next, we’ve brought back Meet & Three. We initially planned to skip a month before our next round-table repast, but when we decided to put together the food issue now in your hands, we also decided it might be a mistake to bump the conversation off the menu. For this installment we invited three scholars to Mr. Friendly’s (co-owned by another Carolina alumnus, Ricky Mollohan, ’00), to discuss how each has incorporated everyone’s favorite topic into her teaching. That they ended up taking pictures of their food and laughing at themselves through much of the first course was half the fun (page 8).

We’re equally excited to debut another semiregular feature called Get Smart. Going forward, this will be our forum for highlighting the many exciting things happening in classrooms across campus. This month, considering the rest of the menu, we focused on USC’s Culinary & Wine Institute. Learn all about the institute’s 11-month cooking program in “An 11-Course Meal,” which can be found on, you guessed it, page 11.

Elsewhere in this issue you can improve your own cooking with the help of a USC chemistry professor (page 12), sit down to a plate of paella with a USC Beaufort Spanish professor (page 13) or go straight-up vegetarian (page 6). If you’re still hungry, check out a few of the food-themed books published by USC Press — “For Further Eating” (page 11).

Finally, one last thing before you commence to chow down. While we were laying out the content for this month’s issue, we came up with one thing we’re pretty sure you won’t find anyplace else: a brand new typographic symbol! The first reader to email us at craigb1@mailbox. sc.edu explaining where the symbol is in the issue, as well as why we designed it the way we did, will receive a prize, courtesy of USC Times.

On the cover: Quail in a Hot Tub, courtesy of Baan Sawan chef and co-owner Alex Suaudom, ’95.

CRAIG BRANDHORST MANAGING EDITOR

VOL. 25, NO.2 1

NOW PLAYING

EXTRA INNINGS

FORMER GAMECOCK INFIELDER RETURNS AS STUDENT COACH

BY THOM HARMAN

Southern women, Southern food

IF YOU GO …

What: Gamecock baseball opening series, USC vs. Bucknell Where: Carolina Stadium When: Feb. 14, 3 p.m.; Feb. 15, 1:30 p.m.; Feb. 16, 12:30 p.m.

Tickets: free for faculty/staff/students; $10-12 for general public

For the most part, USC’s baseball program features the usual mix in the dugout this season: lots of familiar faces and a few new ones. But there will be one face that fits both categories.

Adrian Morales, the starting third basemen on Carolina’s back-to-back national championship teams, returns as a student assistant coach, finishing a criminal justice degree and helping the team prepare for another long season.

The 2014 schedule opens with Bucknell on Feb. 14, and Morales is as fired up as the players.

“We’re ready to get the games going,” he says. “I can’t wait to see the fans. I wish I had a fifth year, so I could play, too.”

When Morales was still manning the hot corner for the Gamecocks, former head coach Ray Tanner said he was like another coach on the field.

“And I’m enjoying it now, too,” Morales says. “I like helping our players whenever I can. And I try to follow the lead of the other coaches.”

Morales likes the makeup of this season’s team. He says returning stars like catcher Grayson Greiner, infielder Joey

Pankake and pitcher Jordan Montgomery are quiet leaders on and off the field, while infielder Max Schrock has stepped up and is more vocal. And a couple of newcomers will round out a squad that returns most of its starters. Three returnees even played alongside Morales during the Gamecocks’ championship runs.

“Patrick Harrington, Bryson Celek and Forrest Koumas are still here. They give me a little bit of a hard time now that I’m a coach,” Morales says, “but not too much.”

Morales has always had a good mental approach to the game. So when younger players come to him during a slump, he will understand. “They’re so talented,” he says. “But they will struggle, and I hope we can get them out of those slumps quickly. SEC play is not easy. You have to have a short memory. Keep moving forward, and try to bounce back as quickly as you can.”

“Baseball is brutal,” he adds. “But that’s what makes it so fun. You struggle for a couple of games, but when you get out of that funk, the feeling is so good. That’s what makes this game so great.”

The 27th-annual University of South Carolina Women’s and Gender Studies conference will focus this year on food and will feature a keynote presentation by Marcie Cohen Ferris, associate professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ferris, whose research interests include the history, foodways and material culture of the Southern United States, including the Jewish South, will present “Edible Moments in Women’s History: The American South.”

IF YOU GO ...

FREEDOM RIDER ARRIVES Civil rights pioneer Diane Nash will join USC President Harris Pastides for this year’s President’s Leadership Dialogue Feb. 25. The Chicago native helped form the Nashville Student Movement to desegregate that city’s lunch counters and later, in 1961, served jail time alongside the Rock Hill Nine, a group of students arrested for their lunch counter protests in South Carolina. She went on to organize the Freedom Ride

IF YOU GO ...

Where: Law School Auditorium When: Feb. 25, 7 p.m.

from Birmingham, Ala., to Jackson, Miss., and was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to a national committee dedicated to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The leadership dialogue is part of the Carolina Leadership Initiative, which helps students develop the motivation and skills to make a difference in their local communities, throughout South Carolina and around the world.

Where Law School Auditorium When Feb. 20, 6 p.m.

2 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014

ON THE ’SHOE

SOUTHERN FOCUS: MCKISSICK PHOTO EXHIBIT CAPTURES RURAL LIFE

BY GLENN HARE

IF YOU GO… What: “Photography of the Rural South” Where: McKissick Museum, 3rd floor When: 8 :30 a.m.-5p.m., weekdays 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturdays

I

mages of friends sharing a laugh in a local grocery store and a proud angler showing off “the one that didn’t get away” are two photographs on display in “Photography of the Rural South,” a new exhibition of student work on view at McKissick Museum.

The exhibit showcases everyday life in communities of less than 1,000 people throughout South Carolina and North Carolina. “The students have documented places like Peak, Frogmore and Norway in South Carolina, and Saluda and Bryson City in North Carolina,” explains USC photography professor Kathleen Robbins, whose course on documentary photography generated the show’s images.

Displayed on the third floor, “Photography of the Rural South” is jointly presented by the Institute for Southern Studies and the Department of Art. Comprising more than 40 color and black and white photographs, the show documents contemporary rural life in the Carolinas. At the end of the exhibition the images will be catalogued and made part of the institute’s permanent collection.

The class enrolls students from across USC’s campus and focuses on basic photographic theories and practices. And the students get additional insight from professionals working in the field. Using Skype, they talk to documentary and fine arts photographers who work specifically in the South and in rural settings.

In addition to capturing images of the people who live in these communities, the exhibit shows familiar local landmarks from the barbershop and laundromat to an abandoned church and vintage bowling alley sign.

“We have students from all majors, not just visual arts students. Many have no photographic training prior to taking this course,” Robbins says.

“They learn ways to become members of the community rather than strangers passing through town.”

For more campus events, visit calendar.sc.edu.

VOL. 25, NO.2 3

AROUND THE TABLE

MOM SAID IT’S NOT POLITE TO READ AT THE TABLE. WE RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE. A BALANCED DIET MEANS FEEDING THE WHOLE PERSON — MIND, BODY, SPIRIT AND SOUL. SO PULL UP A CHAIR, TUCK A NAPKIN ’NEATH YOUR CHIN, TURN THE PAGE AND…

DIG IN!

4 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014

Above: Il Giorgione chef George Kessler finishes off an order of pasta carbonara.

Right: Caprese salad, featuring Kessler’s signature fresh mozzarella.

VOL. 25, NO.2 5

BY CRAIG BRANDHORST

FLAVOR PROFILES

SOMETIMES A COLLEGE EDUCATION PREPARES YOU FOR LIFE IN UNEXPECTED WAYS. THE CAROLINA ALUMNI PROFILED BELOW MAJORED IN JOURNALISM, BIOLOGY, HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY, BUT EACH ULTIMATELY WOUND UP FINDING TRUE HAPPINESS IN THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS — AND RIGHT HERE IN THE CAPITAL CITY. WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR SUCCESS, MOREOVER, THEIR TIME AT USC JUST MIGHT BE THE SECRET INGREDIENT.

W

hen George Kessler came to USC in 1978, he never imagined he’d one day run a popular Italian restaurant on Devine Street, within walking distance of campus. At that time, the Hoboken, N.J. native hadn’t even picked a major.

But the future co-owner of Il Giorgione, which Kessler opened with his wife, Monica, in 2012, had a passion for cooking even before he arrived at Carolina. Using recipes he picked up from his Italian-American grandparents, the young student quickly developed a reputation as someone who knew his way around a kitchen — even if it was only a dorm kitchen.

“I lived in the Wade Hampton Hotel, on the corner of Main and Gervais, and every week we’d all pitch in $5, buy a bunch of stuff, and I’d cook for everybody on the hall,” he recalls. “We’d get a jug of Carlo Rossi wine and have a huge Italian dinner almost every week.”

“All my friends would say, ‘You should be a chef!’ I was like, ‘Eh, whatever.’ I just didn’t have anybody pointing me in that direction.”

That all changed after a study abroad experience in Urbino, Italy. Kessler had been studying Italian since he arrived at USC, and his grandparents often spoke the language around the house, but actually visiting the Old Country turned an interest into a passion.

“That’s when I really fell in love with Italy,” he says. “My family’s from a certain part of Italy, but when I was over there we traveled all over the country and I really started to understand just how diverse Italy is as a country. All the different regions with different foods, different wines, different dialects, all the history — I was just blown away.”

Now a psychology major, he nonetheless signed up for any and every class that had anything to do with Italy. “Language, film, literature, history — didn’t matter,” he says. He even toyed with one day teaching Italian.

Instead, Kessler found himself working his way up the ranks of the restaurant industry. He also spent several years as a travel agent, which

afforded him ample opportunity to revisit the country that impressed him as an undergraduate — and to continue his education as a chef.

“That study abroad experience was 30 years ago, but it really laid the groundwork for opening this restaurant,” Kessler says now. “I never got to teach Italian, but I’m able to teach people about Italy through food and wine. We encompass as many regions as we can, with different dishes, with the wine, the music, the photographs on the walls, everything.”

To make Il Giorgione as authentic as possible, Kessler learned to make fresh mozzarella from a deli owner in Hoboken, researched traditional recipes and even recruited former USC Italian professors Fausto Pauluzzi and Tonino DiGiacomantonio as unofficial consultants.

“I’ve kept in touch with them no matter where I’ve been over the years, and they’re all over this restaurant,” says Kessler. “They were so instrumental in getting this place off the ground, and they both still come in. Fausto’s in here about every week, even just to stop by and say hello. They’re mentors for life, man, since I was a young kid here at USC.”

Family Thai “Waiter — there’s a matzo ball in my tom kha gai…”

If you’re unfamiliar with Thai food, the joke’s probably lost on you. And even if you recognize the coconut milk-and-lemongrass chicken soup, which appears on nearly every Thai menu the world over, you may still wonder how a Jewish dumpling landed in such spicy Asian broth.

However, to Alex Suaudom, ’95, chef at Columbia’s hip Thai bistro Baan Sawan, unexpected mash-ups can be a marriage made in heaven — which is fitting, as the bistro’s name translates as “House of Heaven” or “House of Paradise.”

“It’s fun to play with what’s traditional, what’s not,” says Alex, whose nontraditional take on the matzo ball uses duck fat rendered while he’s making the restaurant’s popular duck confit.

“One particular culture does not own its cuisine exclusively,” he adds, “and Thailand has always been a geopolitical and cultural crossroads.”

For the same reason, Alex likes to work with unusual meats such as grassfed bison, wild boar, even antelope and kangaroo. He then complements these with traditional Thai flavors, local produce when possible and a dash of whimsy.

6 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014 Top: Sam Suaudom, ’03, preps for another night behind the bar at Baan Sawan; brother and chef Alex Suadom, ’95, who shares the Baan Sawan kitchen with his parents, cuts up for the camera.

says Sam Jr. “Some people only get the specials, and sometimes it’s the same with the wine menu, where people simply ask, ‘What should I be drinking with this?’ They recognize that we care enough to make the choices easy.”

Easy, that is — but also fun.

“Everybody’s work is work, it’s toil. That’s why they call it work,” Sam adds. “You have to find something about which you’re passionate, but you also have to keep it interesting, keep it entertaining — to yourself. If you have a good joke, you want share it, right? In the same way, if something makes us happy, we want to share that, too.”

Something brewing “When I design the specials, I take traditional recipes, deconstruct them and then execute them with modern and classic techniques,” Alex explains. “I want people to feel like they’ve had comfort food, something they would eat at home, but because of the flavor profile and how I play with form, it looks and tastes different.”

Dining at Baan Sawan also feels a bit different, with the entire Suaudom family figuring into the mix. On a given night, one or both of Alex’s parents, Nancy and Sam Suaudom, ’75, join their son in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Alex’s brother Sam Jr., ’03, runs front-of-house and oversees Baan Sawan’s beer and wine program.

“What I do, and what the wine program does in concert with what Alex does, is to kind of push people in a certain direction,”

When it comes to craft brewing, USC alumnus and Hunter-Gatherer Brewery & Alehouse founder Kevin Varner, ’93, has long been ahead of the curve.

When South Carolina finally passed legislation making it legal to open a brewpub in 1994, Varner was already working at a small Seattle brewery. But the Greenville native, whose interest in traditional ales started during a study abroad experience in Edinburgh, Scotland, was keen on returning to S.C. and had even tracked down an assortment of used equipment in Eugene, Ore.— including the large brewing vessels that now dominate the area behind the Hunter-Gatherer’s bar.

“I was writing letters to lawmakers, got my parents to write letters, got hung up

VEG OUT ...

BY PAGE IVEY

Public health researcher offers advice on eating better, improving health Losing weight is really quite simple.

“Tracking the calories you eat is

self-monitoring, such as

highly related to weight loss, and it

take in each day and increase the

really doesn’t matter how you do it.

amount of calories you spend and

It can be on a napkin, it can be jotted

decrease your calorie intake and

Miami (Ohio), when she switched

your weight will decrease. Simple

down on scraps of paper,” Turner-

you’re not having to track things,”

to a vegetarian diet because the

to understand, perhaps, but not so

McGrievy says. “But we also know

she says. “That’s really appealing for

vegetarian options at the campus

simple to do.

people hate dietary self-monitoring,

some people, who say, ‘Just tell me

dining hall appealed to her more

and it decreases over time.”

what to eat and that I can eat until

than the meat-centric ones. Then,

I’m full.’ ”

in her junior year, she returned

Enter Brie Turner-McGrievy, diet and behavior researcher with the Arnold School of Public Health.

One cure for that is to put people on diets that don’t require

vegetarian or vegan diets.

saw evidence of this

Reduce the amount of calories you

“You’re naturally going to

Turner-McGrievy says she first

as an undergraduate at the University of

home to Alabama for a semester

VOL. 25, NO.2 7

Hunter-Gatherer owner and brew master Kevin Varner troubleshoots a minor mechanical problem with the brewing system before the Friday evening rush.

on at least once, but I bought this equipment thinking it was going to pass,” recalls the former history major. “That maybe wasn’t very smart, but I knew if I couldn’t do it in S.C., I’d do it someplace. But I really wanted to do it in S.C.” After the bill became law, Varner and a couple of friends did most of the labor on the historic space at the corner of College and Main themselves, using salvaged lumber and, as he puts it, “exposing the bones of the building.”

“The atmosphere, in some ways, is more important to me than anything else,” he explains. “I wanted to make this the kind of place that I would like to go to, like what I’d seen traveling around Europe or in Seattle.”

The Hunter-Gatherer’s location near campus added to that atmosphere, though initially that proximity was a bit of an X-factor.

and moved back

“Twenty years ago it was pretty hard getting on people’s radar, and being next to the university, as beneficial as it was, also made some people think we were a college bar — as in a place that attracts a bunch of kids getting drunk,” says Varner. “That was a perception we had to overcome.”

Two decades later, the Hunter-Gatherer is as much a part of the local fabric as any place in town. It’s also possibly the closest thing there is to an unofficial university watering hole, as evidenced by the graduate students and faculty who drop in after work or for the popular Friday lunch.

“We’ve always had a diverse crowd. There are people in here from age 21 to age 80, there really are, and of course a lot of those people are from the university,” says Varner. “Without USC, Columbia is a much less interesting town.”

After a while, her family noticed

with her parents

they were losing weight, their

to save money. “I

Interested in getting healthy and losing weight in the new year?

clothes fit better and they felt better.

The Arnold School of Public Health is enrolling participants in two weight loss

Both parents ended up becoming

studies, one for families and one for adults. One study will focus on mobile and

vegetarians.

wearable devices that connect parents and children (ages 9 to 12) to family-

was into cooking and I was cooking everything vegetarian for my family,” she says. “For the first couple of weeks, they were in agony. But my mom was so excited that someone was cooking, she said, ‘I want meat,

but your cooking is great.’ ”

“That was eye-opening to see

focused healthy eating and physical activity resources. Participants will need

the power of cooking as a way to

access to an iPhone 4s/5 or iPad. The other study will observe how people

get people to change their diets,”

use and interact with social networks. Interested individuals need to have an

she says. “Actually getting people to

Android smartphone or tablet. Learn more at www.USCWeightResearch.com

taste food and try it out themselves is really important.”

8 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014

MEET&THREE

FOODOGRAPHY

BY CHRIS HORN

We are what we eat. But how we eat and how we represent ourselves as eaters to the rest of the world says as much about who we are as the actual food we put in our mouths and bodies. A photo of a full plate, for example, says something very different than a poem about an empty one.

For a taste of how the academic world is bringing the burgeoning field of foodways and food scholarship into the liberal arts classroom we invited professors Catherine Keyser (English), Agnes Mueller (comparative literature) and Heidi Rae Cooley (media arts) to Mr. Friendly’s in five Points for a little lunchtime conversation.

The three scholars discussed the complicated relationships between food and film, food and fiction, food and photography — each one bringing her own unique expertise to the table. At one point, though, someone inevitably brought up social media, at which point the conversation went viral...

VOL. 25, NO.2 9

This month’s three

AM: I have a couple of Facebook friends who constantly let me know what they’re cooking for

dinner. First, they announce what it is they’re cooking, then they post a picture of the finished meal, and it’s always to communicate, ‘Look how artsy and high class we are because we make these awesome things all the time.’ It’s interesting how food can be used in social media as a way to communicate a lot of things that aren’t really about food at all.

CK: Have you seen the meme of hipsters taking pictures of their food? So it’s a picture of people taking pictures of their food…

AM: Awesome.

HRC: In a recent course I taught (Mangia: Food, Camera, Document) I encouraged the students to take pictures of the food they’re eating, and students would say, ‘I keep meaning to take pictures of my food, and I keep eating it and forget to take the picture!’ And I say, ‘So why not take a picture of the food already consumed?’ There are times I do that where you get a series of empty plates with just the scraps left on the plates. There’s this conception that it has to be the whole food object and not the consumed food object.

I’m very curious about this practice in scrapbooking and family photo albums. You take the picture of the birthday cake and the kid blowing the candles out and cake all over the kid’s face.

These are moments that document having had the food object, an experience with the food object and then having ingested the food object. Thanksgiving meals are often photographed or videoed. I think that’s interesting.”

AGNES MUELLER Associate professor, German and comparative literature

CATHERINE KEYSER Associate professor, English

HEIDI RAE COOLEY Assistant professor, media arts

10 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014

CK: What about the photos at a wedding where you’re eating the wedding cake and stuffing it into your spouse’s mouth?

HRC: Where you smash it into their mouth and wear it as much

as eat it…

Some food for thought...

AM: In film, the moment you have the framing of the food, there’s a AM: Which, by the way — nobody anywhere else in the world does that. People in Europe see that as being so wasteful.

HRC: Like a pie fight where you throw pie in someone’s face…

certain way the food becomes the artifact to be documented, but it also becomes part of you. My interest in thinking about food with my students has been to get them to think about how we get seduced by the look of food, and how in that moment we participate in a culture of picturing food that makes us very visible as biological beings.

CK: It’s actually fun to structure a syllabus around food and literature because it makes you interrogate both of those categories. It’s really neat to teach a novel like John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row along with the food writing of David Sedaris making fun of gourmet customs.

CK: I have to say I have totally indulged in this myself, but what you’re saying totally interests me because it seems to be about the social negotiations around food. The version of this that keeps pushing my hot buttons is the toddler moms who are also foodies.

I’m thinking, How are you doing that? I’m sitting here grading papers and hoping to pop some Trader Joe’s thing in the oven and you’re making what? All of this discussion about food in media is really about class, about culture, about leisure time and about gender roles.

I also think everyone should read M.F.K. Fisher’s “How to Cook a Wolf,” an influential document from the WWII era that a lot of people are not familiar with. It’s a play on the idea of the wolf being at the door. Instead of cowering in fear and worrying about the threat of your empty cupboard, you’re going to find a way to carve up the threat from the outside. She tries to think about cooking as a form of resistance both to the forces of war but also to the domestic forces of austerity and conformity.

I’ve had students say to me, “I never thought about this before!”

HRC: When (USC English professor) David Shields came in and talked to my class about foodways, my students had never thought that Carolina Gold rice needed to have some assistance to not die out. To them, you go to the grocery story and take food home, or you order it in.

To think that there’s a history to it doesn’t always occur to them.

VOL. 25, NO.2 11

FOR FURTHER EATING Still hungry? The University of South Carolina Press has a long history of publishing quality cookbooks and culinary nonfiction. Here’s a quick taste of the press’ many offerings for home cooks and culinary enthusiasts.

The Virginia House-wife

AN 11-COURSE MEAL SHARPENING SKILLS AT CAROLINA’S CULINARY & WINE INSTITUTE BY LIZ MCCARTHY

Want to be an expert chef? Most classes in USC’s Culinary and Wine Institute aren’t aimed at the weekend cook.

Students in the intensive program sign up for 11 courses over 11 months and accomplish more in one 4-hour evening class than many home cooks accomplish in a week.

In the International Cuisine course, for instance, students prepare a poblano chili dish, stir-fried asparagus, tempura vegetables, callaloo (a traditional Caribbean dish), noodle salad, stuffed peppers, cabbage rolls and red snapper Veracruz — all in a single session. Is your mouth watering yet?

In another course, students learn the ins and outs of butchering meat. In yet another, they learn how to create buttery crusts and perfect breads. Each course builds on the last, with students learning everything from knife skills to proper plating technique.

On any given night, the lab kitchen in McCutchen House is constant movement, like a dance. Students spin around one another, running to grab ingredients and shuffling from workspaces to cooktops.

Instructors, who come to teach in the program from restaurant kitchens around town, walk around to consult with each budding chef. They problem-solve when ingredients have spoiled or won’t be enough for a recipe.

“The chefs are great because they work in industry and come back to teach,” says Chef Brian Hay, director of the institute. “The students are getting a knowledge base, but they are also getting a practical experience from those chefs who can tell them about what’s going on daily in the industry.”

Just as much time is spent in professional kitchens across Columbia, learning how to deal with the pressure of cooking for the public.

“They’re not just stuck in the lab,” says Hay. “They’re actually hands-on, which for me is really cool. If you don’t produce for the public, it’s not hands-on. You don’t get the pressure.”

Students in the program range from new chefs in the industry to adventurous home cooks. That cross-section of students really fosters learning in the kitchen, with students teaching one another over the stove.

“If you work 10 years in the industry, you could go to culinary school and still learn something,” Hay says. “When I teach, I’m learning stuff, and I’ve been doing it for a number of years. You don’t ever know everything. I think it’s really cool to watch them evolve.”

Mary Randolph (author), Karen Hess (editor), $29.95 hardcover, 376 pages “The Virginia Housewife” was the first cookbook ever published in America and was seen as the ultimate how-to cookbook of its time. Part of the press’ First Cookbooks series (which also includes “The Carolina Housewife”), this facsimile edition of Randolph’s original 1824 work allows modern readers a chance to learn from the kitchens of America’s past.

Greek Revival From the Garden Patricia Moore-Pastides, $27.95 hardcover and e-book, 160 pages In her latest cookbook, the university’s first lady heads to the garden, offering guidance on healthy eating from the ground up. An accomplished cook and public health professional, MoorePastides presents all-new recipes focused on bringing the bounty of the garden to the table in easy and accessible ways.

Popped Culture Andrew F. Smith, $24.50 hardcover, 256 pages Popcorn was purportedly shared by Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving and, to the rest of the world, now seems as American as baseball and apple pie. “Popped Culture” tests such legends against archaeological, agricultural, culinary and social findings.

While debunking many myths, Smith discovers a flavorful story of the curious kernel’s introduction and everincreasing consumption in North America.

Seeking the Historical Cook Kay K. Moss, $49.95 hardcover/$24.95 paperback, 288 pages Designed for adventurous cooks and “foodies,” this guide to historical cooking methods from 18th- and 19th century receipt (recipe) books is rich with photographs, period images and line art depicting kitchen tools and cooking methods.

Moss also examines ways in which the methods of the past can be used in kitchens today.

12 USCTIMES / FEBRUARY 2014

BREAKTHROUGH BREAKOUT

BY STEVEN POWELL

BETTER COOKING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

G

et yourself a good blowtorch, and you may never again overcook seafood, chicken, beef or any other meat.

That’s an exaggeration, but the principle is sound. According to USC chemistry professor Scott Goode, there’s a style of cooking in which it is virtually impossible to overdo it.

If you want a medium-rare rib roast, for example, the object is to get the interior to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Typically a cook will set the oven to bake considerably higher than that, maybe 350 degrees, and monitor the temperature of the meat as the heat seeps into the center of the roast.

That can certainly work, but it’s not difficult to overshoot the target temperature, as the interior of the roast warms a bit even after it comes out of the oven, usually on the order of 10 degrees.

“Another way to do it is to set your oven to 130 degrees and come back 5-10 hours later,” says Goode, who is also a seasoned home cook. “Some people do that, and they get a perfect mid-rare roast.”

In his freshman chemistry classes, Goode uses the different methods to illustrate two important concepts.

“I call one the equilibrium method, where you allow the roast to reach the final temperature,” he says. “The other one is the kinetic method, where you cook it at a high temperature and then take it out at the right moment.”

About 15 years ago, Goode ventured into serious cooking, moving beyond programmed recipes for the first time. He finds underlying scientific principles throughout the culinary arts.

“When I look at cooking, I see a combination of almost everything I teach in chemistry,” he says.

Whether his students are being introduced to new concepts such as phase transitions, activation energy or stoichiometry, Goode can often use the science of cooking to demonstrate a point.

And that blowtorch? Although the “equilibrium method” gets the meat to a uniform temperature, another step is required for a crusty skin and browned meat. High heat is required to bring about the Maillard browning reaction, the source of innumerable molecules imparting flavor and aroma to cooked meat.

Goode tried the direct flame method with scallops, after first cooking them sous-vide (French for “under vacuum”) in a constant-temperature water bath of 122 degrees for thirty minutes. The browning step worked out well for him, but it can be tricky.

“It’s not that easy to get a good, deep caramelization with a blowtorch,” he says.

VOL. 25, NO.2 13

SYSTEMWIDE

FOCUS

UOFSC BEAUFORT

Ben Nelson, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of South Carolina Beaufort

Students dine with Ben Nelson (left, in blue) during a study abroad trip to Spain.

Is there a specific aspect of Latin food that underscores the Latin heritage?

What’s prevalent in the Hispanic world is the idea of a sobremesa.

It’s the time spent after lunch or dinner talking with the people who shared the meal with you. The family will eat together, but for an hour or so afterward, they’ll still be at the table talking, conversing.

The idea is that food brings the family together. In Spain, lunch is the biggest meal of the day. It usually consists of two dishes, and people devote two hours to lunch. Of course, they also work later in the day.

How does the Latin attitude about food differ from that of the typical American family?

The Latin attitude toward food is healthier. In our culture, we have three meals a day. In Spain, on a typical day, they’ll wake up and have

something light. Then about 11 o’clock, they’ll have a small sandwich.

Lunch starts at 2 o’clock and it goes until 4. That’s the biggest meal.

And then there’s tapas, and that’s around 7 or 8 o’clock at night.

For people who aren’t familiar with the term, maybe you could define tapas.

Tapas is a social event, a variety of appetizers or snacks, served hot or cold, that will hold them over until dinner later in the evening.

You get together with friends and go to bars and have little things to eat. And then dinner is a very small meal so you don’t go to bed hungry. That can be at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, midnight. That’s why their metabolism keeps on going, because they’re not bloated by three big meals. Most days, I try to eat as if I’m European.

AROUND THE SYSTEM USC Aiken has ranked in the top 100 nationally for its undergraduate online nursing program and online graduate education technology program in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Online Programs” for 2014.

USC Beaufort professor John Salazar is leading a visitor profile study and economic impact analysis, one of the few in the U.S. to compare a national sampling to the Hilton Head Island consumer.

USC School of Medicine Greenville clinical physiology professor William Roudebush was elected vice president of the Society of Reproduction Biologists & Technologists, an affiliate of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

USC Lancaster welcomed visiting theater director Andrea Paciotto, who conducted a workshop with USCL students aimed at producing a piece that addresses racism and civil rights.

USC Salkehatchie has completed a redesign of its magazine, Salkehatchie Update, which goes out to USC Salkehatchie alumni and friends.

USC Sumter Fire Ant Athletics will host baseball and softball winter camps in February.

USC Upstate nursing professor Darlene Amendolair has been named a 2014 Breakthrough Star by USC’s Office of Research. The award honors faculty who show exceptional commitment to their fields through research and scholarly activity.

USC Union adjunct professor Bill Taylor has endowed a memorial scholarship to honor his deceased wife. The scholarship will go to a USC Union student planning to attend Palmetto College.

To learn more about the USC system, visit sc.edu/about/system_and_campuses.

OVERHEARD @UOFSC

“We really believe in person-to-person diplomacy. These students

had a great experience, not just at USC, but in the U.S. Listening to them reminisce about USC, their experiences academically and personally, this is why I work in international education.” — International Student Services Director Jodi Pritt on a recent goodwill trip to Oman. (@UofSC Today)

OVERHEARD @UOFSC

“In the same way that oil and canvas are mediums for a painting,

magnetic tape is the medium for the second half of the 20th century. Preservation is really important.”

— chemistry graduate student Brianna Cassidy on a project to restore and preserve historic reel-to-reel tape recordings.

OVERHEARD @UOFSC “As

outsiders

“I choose to give to the Family Fund as a way to demonstrate my support of the mission of the University of South Carolina, and more specifically, the mission of my department. We work hard to provide meaningful, high-quality experiences for students, and contributing to scholarship programs helps ensure students are able to engage with those experiences throughout their time at Carolina.” — Tricia Kennedy, program coordinator for Peer Leadership and Administration with University 101 Programs

(@UofSC Today)

Employees can maximize their impact to Carolina by participating in the Family Fund via payroll deduction or one-time gifts at www.sc.edu/familyfund.

rich experience.” — director of USC’s Electron Microscopy

we have the ability to bring an unbiased perspective to a community. We can appreciate a community for its beauty instead of getting caught up in any political and historical baggage.” — Ben Muldrow, a 2000 USC advertising graduate and partner at Arnett Muldrow, a Greenville, S.C.-based urban planning firm, on his approach to marketing small towns across the U.S. (Spring 2014 Carolinian)

@UOFSC

OVERHEARD

“Lots of universities have microscopy centers,

but some centers don’t allow students to handle the scopes because they’re so delicate and expensive. But we have a different mission here. After extensive training, we let students use the instruments because it gives them a very Center Soumitra Ghoshroy. (@UofSC Today) OVERHEARD

@UOFSC

“I love it here. It’s a family atmosphere. I’m

an alum, and I like the idea of making a difference at the place where I went to school. I want to make sure all students, faculty and staff are safe and secure, and I want to stop anybody that means us harm.” — Allan Bolin, patrol

sergeant, USC Police Department. (@UofSC Today) OVERHEARD @UOFSC “Studies have shown that people who are engaged in these kinds of projects often develop a greater sense of place and a greater appreciation and awareness of the places that they are working in.” — Geography professor John Kupfer on a “citizen scientist” program to measure champion trees at Congaree National Park. (@UofSC Today)

OVERHEARD @UOFSC “We’re past the ‘stethoscope of the future’ reference

to portable ultrasound. It’s now essential for almost every specialty in medicine. We can’t do oncology, obstetrics or trauma without ultrasound.” — Dr. Stephen Smith, professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at USC’s School of Medicine Columbia (Breakthrough magazine, spring 2014)

OVERHEARD @UOFSC

“If you have high blood pressure, you have a 50 percent risk

for developing the signs and symptoms of heart failure — and that is even if the hypertension is controlled. We need to develop a blood test to find those with the greatest risk and work with them because once you present with heart failure secondary to hypertension, there is no treatment.” — School of Medicine professor Francis G. Spinale on cutting-edge cardiovascular biomarker research. (@UofSC Today)

OVERHEARD @UOFSC “What’s interesting about this group is that most of us

don’t know each other, but we are joined by our interest in giving something meaningful back to USC. We may live thousands of miles apart — Seattle, Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte — but we have a common bond.” - Zoher Bharmal, ’98 master’s, part of a group of USC alumni Microsoft employees who established a computer science scholarship with help from Microsoft’s matching gift program (Engineering and Computing magazine).

OVERHEARD @UOFSC “We want our faculty

and staff to understand that we are here to support them whether they wish to quit – and this may be giving them incentive to do so – or they need to figure out how to manage their cravings while they are at work.” – Director of Campus Wellness Marguerite O’Brien on USC’s new campuswide tobacco ban.(@UofSC Today)

OVERHEARD @UOFSC

“I’m very happy that the younger people, the

assistant professors now on the faculty, are doing very well in terms of getting grants. That’s always a very good sign for the future.” — Milind Purohit, chair, USC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. (@UofSC Today)