What a Pickle

[bright music] [birds chirping] [cabbage crunching] [engine rumbling] [knives thudding] - Now, that is a perfect head of cabbage collards.

- That is.

[calm guitar music] I woke up one morning, and there was a bag of collard swimming in this kind of murky-looking liquid on my front doorstep, and my dad told me that that was collard kraut given to me by my neighbors.

I was a young chef studying pickling and fermentation, and the idea that these men were making kraut out of collards down the road from me just totally blew my mind.

- Not many people know about collard kraut.

If you leave this area, no one knows about it, no one.

I think it probably came from people making their cabbage kraut, and they tried collards.

[laughs] - It made me see the history of this place, you know, the fact that the Mills, my neighbors, probably came from Germany.

And when they got here, they wanted to make the sauerkraut they had always known, but what they found were collards.

For me, this new old way of pickling really made me see my community and the people who live in it in a different light.

[wood chunk splashes] [Vivian laughing] [upbeat music] I'm Vivian, and I'm a chef.

The food I cook tells the story of Southern food as I know it.

But that story is more complex than I thought.

♪ I don't know where I'm going ♪ ♪ But I'm on my way ♪ ♪ Lord, if you love me ♪ ♪ Keep me, I pray ♪ - So I set out to find the dishes that bind and define us.

Along the way, I saw that when we eat together, we share more than a meal.

The American South is my classroom, and the dishes we share will be my road map.

[bright music] Andrea and I are teaching a pickle class.

Andrea wrote a book on pickles, she's so modest.

- I am, yeah.

- I walk around with my book like on my chest all the time.

[both laughing] What do you call something that's like an educational speech on a subject.

- A lecture?

- I'm doing a [laughs], yeah, I'm doing a chow-chow lecture at the Chow-Chow Festival, 'cause is not just gonna be about chow-chow.

I'm basically gonna do a world map that identifies pickles around the world.

Chow-chow, its origins kind of come to us from I think the UK, and it's heavily influenced in the UK from India.

- Well you know, the key ingredient to all Southern pickle recipes is turmeric.

- I mean, that has to come from India.

- Uh-huh, and British Columbia.

- I mean, we don't have it in any of our other food.

- Right.

- I'm gonna make a muscadine relish, kind of chow-chow.

Okay, so you're going to do the fermented pickles.

Something like fermented pickles, even like kimchi, I find oddly thirst-quenching.

- Oh, yeah.

- And refreshing in a way that like a vinegar pickle is not.

- My family's German, so I grew up every New Year's Day, pork and sauerkraut.

This is my effort to kind of recreate that.

- Do they shred it that thin?

- Yeah, and the also shred cucumber that thin.

- Pickles are foods preserved in brine.

That brine can be made of an acid like vinegar or citrus.

It's the acid that pickles it.

Or that brine can be made from salt interacting with beneficial bacteria that forms in acid.

That's a fermented pickle.

Both are means to the same purpose, food preservation.

This afternoon, I get to teach a family of ladies about the wonderful world of pickles, because even for the best cooks, pickles and how they come to be can seem mysterious.

Hello!

- Hello.

- Hi there!

- Who's the birthday girl?

- I'm 80 now!

- Wow, wow, my mom turns 80 this year.

- Does she?

- Yes.

- Well, you be sweet to her.

- I need to be reminded.

- Yeah.

[Vivian laughs] - Come on in.

I'm gonna make kind of a version of chow-chow.

So if you'll start squeezing these into here.

[upbeat music] - All right, ladies, you're on sauerkraut duty.

- Don't get cocky on that thing now.

[group laughing] - The cool thing with fermentation is you're mixing the fresh vegetables with salt 'cause the salt has started to do its work to get the liquid outta there, and it creates its own brine.

Yeah, so you can just see in the brine stirring.

I tested this a couple weeks ago, and it molded on the top, so that's why you wanna keep this little ingenious weight on there.

And then it can vent, 'cause if you tightened it, it would explode 'cause it was fermenting.

- Okay, so I'm gonna kind of build this relish.

So I cooked these with just some water, and I chopped 'em up a little bit because I don't want it to have big pieces of hull in the relish.

My red onions, got celery and fennel in here.

And then I have the pulp from cooking the grapes, so I'm gonna add that, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, and put a couple of bay leaves.

The things that are actually gonna preserve it, so this granulated sugar and cider vinegar.

And then this is the water that I cooked the hulls in, and it has like tannins which is gonna add like another dimension to the relish.

And then we'll bring it up to a boil.

[upbeat music] Okay, I'm gonna let y'all do this.

That's right, around this.

- Cheers!

- Cheers!

- Cheers!

[glasses clinking] - Thank you!

- Thank you.

- Thank you!

[upbeat music] - Before the dawn of refrigeration, people packed cabbage, radishes, turnips, and cucumbers with salt to transform them into kimchi, sauerkraut, and kosher dills as a means to make those vegetables last longer.

Sailors on ships sustained themselves on bacalao and pickled herring.

Resourceful homemakers made escabeche from scraps of cooked chicken and pork.

Cooks made achaar out of mango and lime using sunlight, salt, oil, and the warm spices that came to define chow-chow, relishes, and piccalillis.

Pickles were born as a means of preservation, but they've become the way the world puts pucker, punch, texture, and the salivating powers of salt into our favorite foods.

[upbeat guitar music] We're gonna talk about the pickles of the world, figuring out where chow-chow actually comes from.

The two main types of pickles, vinegar or fermented.

The third type of pickles are preserved in mustard oil.

And the fourth type of pickle is the most rare pickle on the planet.

His name [laughs] is the Jerkin' Gherkin, right here.

I thought y'all might need some comic relief, so let's laugh it up, okay?

[crowd applauding] Turmeric, mustard seeds, and ground ginger really define chow-chow.

So India is incredibly important the world over when you look at pickles.

Thank y'all very much.

[crowd cheering and applauding] [bright music] - A pickle can be anything.

A pickle can be a fruit or a vegetable that has been pickled, right?

- Pickle, you really use the root vegetable.

- Vegetable or meat.

- Brined in an acid, usually vinegar.

- Some with salt, some with sugar, too.

- So that it lasts longer, and it gives it kind of a salty, savory flavor.

- You get a little bit a acid in there, and it just turns it into like a vinegary, like vinegary goodness.

- And pickles just kinda really give you that brightness or that high note.

And I think that's awesome from a culinary standpoint to have that burst of acidity and crunch.

I think that's fantastic.

- While I was particularly enthused by my pickle lecture, most people come to things like the Chow-Chow Festival to eat.

They get most excited about special-experience dinners like this one called Brown in the South.

It's a dinner series put on by chefs of South Asian descent who celebrate their cultural food traditions, mingling them with the place they live and work, the American South.

Hi, how are you?

- Hi!

Good, how are you?

- Good.

- How'd it go today?

- Oh, it was good!

- I like your glasses!

- Thank you.

- You look very smart.

- Well, I put them on to be a pickle professor.

[Cheetie laughing] [calm music] - What are you making?

- I'm making a Kashmiri apple sabzi.

It's like tart and spicy and sweet and sour.

- All the things.

All your food.

- All the things that I love, yeah.

[laughs] - Yes.

- Vivian, have you met Farhan?

- Hold on.

- Hi.

- Hi, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you, I like your shirt.

- Oh, thank you, festive for the occasion.

- Hey, Vivian, how's it going?

- Hey.

Good to see you.

- Nice to see you, nice to see you.

[both laughing] - We Indians don't do that, so I don't know why I did that.

- How do you greet people?

- In Indians, normally, it's with the head bobble.

Well, thanks for coming out.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Not at all.

- That's very good.

- Thank you.

- Samantha!

- Are you Samantha?

Sam?

- Sam.

- I'm Vivian.

- Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- What are you making tonight?

- For the pickle, I'm doing a Sri Lankan turmeric black mustard pickle.

- Well, I will get out of your way so you can actually work.

- Thank you, it's great to finally meet you.

- Nice to meet you, nice.

- Cheers!

- I look forward to eating!

- Yes!

♪ Word to your moms, I'm here to drop bombs ♪ ♪ I got more ♪ So I'm gonna stop now [laughing].

[crowd chattering] - Hi.

- Sonia, so nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you, nice to meet you.

- Chef.

- Very nice to meet you, I'm Vivian.

- Thank you so much for joining us tonight for the fifth Brown in the South dinner.

This is so exciting.

[crowd cheering and applauding] - So what is this?

- Sri Lankan pickles, yes.

- So this is a traditional Sri Lankan pickle.

It's called achcharu.

I spike my pickling liquid with turmeric, and you can actually see all these little flecks of black mustard on there.

I like to just put a little bit of Sri Lankan culture straight into what I'm making.

- Well, it's kinda spicy.

[laughs] [calm music] - It's delicious.

- Okay, so I have a pickled green tomato and watermelon rind done in the style of a Punjabi pickle.

The brine is vinegar and Indian raw sugar called jaggery and mustard oil, and what the oil does is coat everything and keeps bacteria from forming 'cause India's hot.

- Maybe this is Cheetie's?

Whew, my mouth is hot now.

[laughs] - I love this, I love how he's just eating everything, it's awesome.

Probably the greatest honor of our professional career is to have him here eating all this food tonight, so.

- It's very good.

- Thank you.

Chef, honor.

- Chef, thank you.

- That happened.

[laughs] - That happened.

[upbeat music] - Your son is?

- My son is the chef.

- Oh, he made the pimiento cheese!

- This is based on sort of a classic Southern pimiento cheese, but the twist of it is I pickle the pimientos in my mom's achaar pickling spice.

So cream cheese, mayo.

Achaar is a classic Indian pickle.

Freshly grated cheddar, and then you kinda massage the cheese into this mixture.

This is Mom.

Taste like home?

[laughs] - Very good.

- It smells amazing.

- Wow, that's good.

That is delicious.

- Yeah.

- It's very good.

- Whoo!

- Whoo!

- Brown in the South started as a conversation, a question, really, chefs of Indian descent that found ourselves serendipitously living and working in the American South.

And the real question that arose out of that was how long do we have to live in a place to be no longer considered other?

When someone that looks like us say we're from American South, usually there's a "Oh, really?"

[group laughing] - "But you speak such good English!"

[group laughing] [calm guitar music] - This collection of chefs have forged a culinary community that functions as a family.

Meherwan, who's one of the godfathers of the group, introduced Asheville to an elevated Indian dining experience through his restaurant Chai Pani.

Meherwan's invited me and Sonia, a journalist who wrote about the group, to join him and his Brown in the South Family of chefs to geek out on pickles.

- Pickle game on?

- Pickle game.

- All right, I mean, I guess what we call pickles in India is more like a chutney.

- Well, this is the eternal debate, right?

The difference between pickle and chutney.

- I mean, it says pickle on it, so I'm-- - What is chutney?

- Right.

- I think chutney's-- - I am not going to defend chutney.

- Just sweet, it's usually-- - May I dip in the chutney?

- Yes, you may.

- I think a chutney is perishable, and a pickle is not.

- Oh.

- Oh!

- That's a good rule, okay.

- Oh!

- This is, it's like green mango.

They shred it, and then they cook it down with jaggery.

It's almost like a jam.

- You know, when you read the label, it's the carrot and dried fruit and pickle.

- So it's a carrot.

- Carrots, all right, try the pickle.

- That's delicious.

- That is really good.

- What do we got?

Let's try these, oh, wow.

Boils her limes in saltwater, lots of jaggery.

So now we're gonna get into the oil- and acid-based pickles.

This is one is gonna be much more pungent.

- Yeah.

- Pardon my fingers.

- It looks like it's gonna be hot.

- It is.

- Okay.

[laughs] - It's gonna be hotter, go for it.

- That'll stay with you for a while.

- It's not as spicy as you think it is.

- I think what you all are doing with Brown in the South is so special and so important, but how did the idea come about?

- I realized that the problem wasn't that the South hadn't accepted me.

I mean, we were all successful, and we all have restaurants in the South.

It was just that I hadn't owned it.

- Meherwan actually has a huge role in my own self-discovery of what type of Indian food I wanna make.

So Chai Pani Atlanta opened when I was in high school, and as soon as it opened, I'm like, "Wow, this is so cool."

'Cause you walk in, and it felt like you're in India, right?

My dad, we grew up owning Indian restaurants, but basically, it was Indian food disguised for American people.

- So I didn't realize that your parents ran Indian restaurants.

- Yeah, and that's the reason why-- - He's so adamant that you're not gonna do that.

- Yeah, 'cause I watched my parents struggle growing up.

Like, my dad had his own business in India.

They left all that behind for my parents both working 60 hours a week, living in a cramped apartment.

- Our generation, where our parents were literally, you know, it meant so much to them that for all that sacrifice that we at least honored that sacrifice by accomplishing a degree and advanced degree.

I don't, I couldn't care less if my daughter, I want her to follow her passion, 'cause-- - This is, but for them, education was a huge privilege, especially for moms, you know?

- Yep.

- I mean, my mother getting a PhD, she was the first person in her family to get anything.

So when she said, "You can be whatever you want," she was giving me permission to be a doctor.

[group laughs] - I love pickled everything, acid everything, pickled watermelon rinds.

- My favorite, pickled mushrooms.

- I like pickled onions.

- Pickled rutabagas.

- I've been on a green bean pickled vegetable kick.

- Picked carrots and jalapenos, potatoes.

- Or like just any pepper that you can grow in your garden.

- Eggplants and unripe papaya is actually really good.

- There's also picklebacks [laughs], which is the whiskey shot that you do with pickle juice.

So I just always associate them with fun things.

- Working in the food industry is no longer frowned upon.

Now, some chefs are treated like rock stars.

Cheetie actually is a rock star, but that's a different story.

- Cheetie, Cheetie, Cheetie, Cheetie!

[group laughing] - So we are here in Meherwan's beautiful kitchen.

- Thank you.

- So Cheetie, what are you making?

- An interpretation of sweet mango pickle, but we're using green tomatoes and watermelon rind, 'cause were in the South.

- 'Cause we're [laughing].

So what are you making, Sam?

- So the other night, we had achcharu, which is a black mustard turmeric pickle.

- And you said achcharu.

- Achcharu.

- So in Hindi, we say achaar.

- So it's similar to achaar.

- Achaar.

- And the word achaar is pickle in Hindi.

[calm music] - We got green papaya.

I peel it, I scoop out the seeds, and then I slice it pretty thin.

I found some really pretty radishes, so I wanted to add those in.

We've got carrots, we've got pearl onions.

I've got black mustards seeds down here.

And then I'm gonna use little bit of turmeric, too.

- So you're gonna boil these vegetables in this turmeric-laced liquid.

- Spice, right, right.

And the onions are super quick, but everything else boils in about four minutes, and then it gets tender enough.

[calm music] After that, I create a paste with the ginger, the garlic, and the black mustard seeds.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa.

- Yes, I want this, you're gonna-- - Wait a minute.

Do you bloom these, pop these, or you just go and just-- - I'm gonna buzz 'em.

- You're not gonna temper them at all.

- No!

- Wow, I've never seen that happen.

- Actually, if you bloom it in hot oil, it loses its fermenting capacity.

So you wanna keep it neutral.

- Oh!

- You wanna just heat it up.

- I did not know that.

- And that's what makes it ferment.

- Neither did I!

And now I do!

[laughs] - Neither did I.

- I have some ginger that I sliced up, garlic, some of these black mustard seeds, and a generous pinch of salt.

- So the mustard seeds are the thing, the acid component that's gonna pickle the vegetables.

- And I add a little bit of vinegar to help them along, though.

- Okay.

- I'm gonna take a spoonful of this really pretty turmeric, too.

[calm music] So I'm gonna take the paste that we made, and then we're just gonna put that on our vegetables, and then we're just gonna toss the vegetables in it.

Look at all those colors, too.

- That's beautiful.

[calm music] So Cheetie, what you got, girl?

- Well, all of this is is this tossed in salt, covered in cold water overnight.

You strain the water out, rinse it, boil it, and then you're ready to pickle.

And I did the same thing with the green tomato.

I just tossed 'em in salt.

Getting the excess moisture out of whatever you're pickling helps the texture be crunchy and then also brings the flavors into the vegetable or fruit.

- Yeah, because you're pulling all the water out.

- Right.

- So it distills it down into what it is.

- The essence.

- The essence.

- The essence of it.

[laughs] - So once you're at this stage, what happens then?

- Then I do like a Southern watermelon rind pickle and boil it in vinegar and sugar.

Now we're gonna make this brine, if you will.

In here, I have canola oil and mustard oil in here, too.

And so this is a combination of Nigella seed, fennel seeds, fenugreek seed.

So I'm gonna bloom those real fast, and everything goes really quickly here.

- Okay, I'll get out of your way then.

[laughs] - And then I've got turmeric and a little chili powder.

- And blooming it-- - Right.

- That just like way-- - And you can smell it, right?

- Yes.

- And that's jaggery, we talked about that earlier.

Got raw sugar that's been crumbled, and I've got salt and just distilled white vinegar in here.

So I'm gonna cook everything together, and you don't need to cook it very long.

It's not stunning.

- Oh, no, I think it is, like how the green has emerged from the-- - It's so bright and fresh.

- Yeah.

- Oh, look at that, the seeds.

- That is so good!

It's so good, isn't it?

- Oh, my god.

That's delicious.

- Yay!

[calm music] - Spending time with Meherwan, Sam, Cheetie, and Farhan, I felt like the welcome guest at a family reunion.

And Sam was the fun cousin I'd never met.

I wanted to spend more time with her.

That meant going to one of her Sri Lankan pop-up dinners in Lexington, Kentucky, a place defined by horses and bourbon.

[calm guitar music] - You look around, and you're just surrounded by gorgeous.

- This is just like everything I imagined horse country to be.

[horse whinnies] Oh, yay, thank you.

- Careful, he'll nip ya.

[horse whinnies] - And you lived in Boston for 11 years?

- Yeah.

- And why, why come back to Kentucky?

- You know, I didn't expect to come back here, but there's something about it.

It's beautiful, amazing people, amazing foods, and it's relaxing here.

It feels like a long exhale.

- Sam said there was no way I should come to Kentucky without visiting a bourbon distillery.

You know what pickles and bourbon have in common?

Fermentation.

- We need to get you some bourbon.

- Yes.

- It's open!

- Whoo!

[calm music] I could watch this for hours, all those bubbles popping.

- It's all the yeast eating up the sugars, and actually, if you hold your hand over it, it feels really warm, isn't that weird?

You wanna taste it?

- It's good.

- It is good!

- Oh, god!

Look out, they're all coming!

- That is so cool.

- Have you ever taken a pickleback?

- Oh, yeah.

I did sneak in a flask of pickle juice in.

- Well, get that pickle juice out.

I wanna take mine from the flask.

- Okay, all right, we'll take a big sip of bourbon, and cheers!

[glasses clink] - Cheers!

[calm music] - To pickles.

- Oh.

- No word.

- I don't mind it.

You know why it's this color?

- Uh-uhú.

- Turmeric from India.

- See, look at us tying everything in together with Professor Pickle.

- I never stop.

[Sam laughing] - On our tour de pickle, Sam insisted we meet her friend, Agnes Marrero.

Agnes makes a pickled fish dish, and we're meeting at a grocery store to get the ingredients we need.

- Mamita!

- Mamita!

[Sam speaks in foreign language] - How are you?

[Agnes speaks in foreign language] I want you to meet a friend of mine.

- Yeah.

- Vivian, this is the lovely Agnes Marrero.

- I feel like I need to do the Mamita!

- Nice to meet you!

- I know Agnes, you're family.

- Nice to meet you.

- Welcome to Lexington.

- Thank you.

- Let's go shopping.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Let's go shopping.

- We gotta get some supplies.

- Yeah.

[upbeat music] So I'm gonna get some apple cider vinegar and some extra virgin olive oil from Spain.

That's what my mama used to use.

And I'm gonna get some Manzanillo olive.

We're gonna need some bay leaf for aromatics.

We are going to do the marinade of the fish with a little bit of lime juice.

We don't have bell peppers, but I think this one can be used.

I'm gonna have a peep and see if they are hot or sweet.

- Are they sweet?

- Because they smell sweet, they don't smell hot.

We gonna get some fresh garlics.

We don't do the peel, already peeled garlic.

No, my aunties will kill me if I do that.

- Good, they're good women.

- Yeah, we don't have Spanish onions, we can do Southern Vidalia onions.

Sometimes here, because we are in Lexington, we have to be flexible, you know?

- Right.

- Whatever it's in the front of your, you use it, and you make it happen.

- Yes.

[all laughing] [calm guitar music] - Okay, so you are from Puerto Rico.

- Yes, I am.

- And how did you end up here?

- I end up here in Lexington because I came originally for a graduation of a cousin that used to live in Somerset, Kentucky.

And 21 Puerto Ricans went into the airplane to see the first Latino graduated from that Maisie's class from there.

- Oh, wow.

- And we bought the flag and we bought the banderas, and we make the TV news, by the way.

[all laughing] I was trying to expand my experience in culinary.

Farm to table was going on.

I'm trying to mix Puerto Rican cuisine with Southern cuisine.

- This is catfish, which there's nothing more-- - Yes, exactly.

- Quintessentially Southern than catfish.

[calm guitar music] - So we gonna julienne this onions.

- Okay.

- I'm going to marinate the fish.

- Tell me what the escabeche, escabeche?

- Escabeche.

- What does that mean, exactly?

- It's a sauce that is made every Holy Thursday.

The idea is to marinate the fish in the sauce 24 hours, and in Holy Friday, we don't supposed to cook anything.

- You make it on Thursday, you put the fish in the sauce that night, and it can sit out.

- Sit out, yes.

- Because it's a pickling liquid, essentially.

- It's a pickling liquid.

Since the oil and the vinegar will take care of the fish, and we eat at room temp with avocado and bread, and you don't have to cook anything that day.

- Right.

- And I was thinking about that my escabeche recipe, where it come from.

Yesterday night, I was looking into my library, and I found this book that my father gave to my mother when they got married.

- Oh, my word!

- Yeah, I found the recipe there in that book.

Would you like to see it?

- I would love to see it!

- Okay, let me show it.

This is the book that my father gave to my mother when they got married.

- Oh, wow.

And your dad gave it to your mom, like, you better get ready to start cooking for me.

[laughs] - Yeah, well, it says, "To my dear wife, "with all my love, and hoping that my stomach pains ends."

- That my stomach pain ends?

- And apparently, he was cooking himself.

- Oh!

[Agnes laughing] This must've been such an emotional find.

- Oh, my god.

I just don't wanna start crying right now.

See, Pescado Escabeche.

- I read somewhere that escabeche was developed like on ships.

- Yes, yes.

- To preserve the fish.

- To preserve the fish.

- And like so many of the things that we love to eat today, like all kinds of pickles, and-- - Yes.

- You know, our country hams, and everything.

- Yes, yes.

- They grew out of necessity.

- Or preservation, preservation.

- Yes, and stuck around-- - Yes.

- Because they taste good.

- That's exactly right.

[calm music] I'm gonna get a pilon here.

- What'd you call that?

- A pilon, this is where I smash my fresh garlic, you do the honors?

- Sure!

- She's putting you to work, Vivian.

[all laughing] - Mash it up, mash it up.

- There you go!

- In the meantime, we're gonna put the sauce to cook.

- So is this sauce that we're building, is this the pickling part?

- Yes, this is the pickling part.

And it's very important to have the right ratio, because if you have more vinegar, it's gonna be too sour.

- Right, and if you don't have enough vinegar, then it's not gonna do the preserving it's supposed-- - It's not gonna do the preserving, yes.

[upbeat music] To the fryer.

[calm music] - So how do y'all even know each other?

- Sammi was doing pop-ups of Sri Lanka Bites.

And I was in Lexington, and I was like, oh, my god, that is the most exciting thing I ever heard in a long time.

[Vivian and Sam laughing] And then that night, I met her.

Sammi was like, "Hi, how are you?"

and hugged me.

And I thought she was Latin.

- Oh, really?

[Sam laughing] - 'Cause we are touching, and we are, you know, it's like very Latino.

- Well, but I had heard about you for ages.

- Well, now I'm shy.

[all laughing] - Now you're shy?

- Yeah, I am.

- Now you're shy.

- No, no, yeah, yeah, no, no.

[oil sizzling] [upbeat music] - This is essentially the pickling liquid.

- Yes, I'm gonna pour that on top of the fish.

- Typically, you would eat this the next day so it pickles, right?

- Yes, this is the catfish escabeche from Lexington, Kentucky.

- Puerto Rican style!

- Puerto Rican style and Sammi styles with Vivian.

[all laughing] Thank you, girls.

- That looks so good.

- Wait until you taste it, my dear.

- I'm wanna try the liquid first.

- Yeah.

- That's wonderful.

- I'm glad you like it.

- Cheers, my dears!

- Salut!

- Salut!

- Thank you for being here.

- Cheers, thank y'all.

- Thanks for having us.

[calm guitar music] - All I've heard about for weeks are Sam's Sri Lankan pop-up dinners.

Most pop-ups start in a home or a restaurant, but Sam started hers in an actual pop-up tent set up behind a bar.

She's moved inside now, and I can't wait to see what this is all about.

Hey, hey!

- Hi!

[Vivian laughing] - Ooh, look at all this stuff you got!

- It's the best pop-up bar in Lexington.

- Are there a lot of them?

- No.

- Okay.

[both laughing] Where are you from?

- I live here in Lexington now, but I came here by way of Whitesburg.

I used to live up a holler called Solomon, really close to the CANE Kitchen.

- I'm going to the CANE Kitchen tomorrow.

- Mm-hmm, my friend Valerie runs it.

I came down here with a boyfriend, and it was like the best decision I've ever made in my life.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- Moving to Kentucky's a pretty good decision, the best decision I've ever made, too.

[lively orchestral music] - So what's on the menu tonight?

- So I decided to make some barbecue sandwiches.

We have three different kinds of sandwiches, the tamarind pork, the meatball, and the jackfruit, three different kinds of rice bowls with that same profile.

And then we've got deviled eggs.

So have you ever had a Sri Lankan meatball?

- What do you think?

[laughs] - I mean.

- No, no, I mean.

- I'm not the most common cuisine around.

- And so what goes on the sandwich with the meatballs?

- You got some pickled onions.

You know, it's just a very traditional Sri Lankan condiment called lunu miris, and then-- - Mm, mm, mm!

[Sam laughing] - That is so good!

- So I'm gonna show you how to make some lunu miris.

- Okay, let's say the word again.

- Lunu.

- Lunu.

- Miris.

- Miris.

[calm music] - These are just onions with some black pepper, two pretty generous pinches of salt.

- So what is that?

- Don't get too big of a snoot of it, but that's a roasted cayenne.

- That looks hot, what you-- - It is.

- The hot pepper.

[both laughing] - And then I'm gonna pull in a little bit of lime juice.

- Okay.

- To kinda bring that quick pickling effect together.

- And a quick pickle in your mind is something has acid applied to it, and it happens in a short period of time, versus like a fermented, like takes multiple days, sometimes weeks.

- Well, like the ones we did in Asheville together, those have to go overnight.

- Right.

- So in Sri Lanka, this is called kiri hodi, and it's a very traditional coconut milk gravy.

- So everybody's got a gravy.

- Everybody's got a gravy.

Everyone's got a pickle, everyone's got a gravy.

- Everybody's got a meatball, apparently.

- Everyone's got a meatball.

You just need a little help.

- The pickles really, they add crunch to something that's kinda soft, and the acid like points to the beef and the coconut milk.

I mean, it's hard to explain why pickles are so important in something that's rich like this, but they really send it over the top.

- Because it's texture, it's brightness.

You don't want something that's flat.

You wanna have a taste memory that's gonna go pop, it's like a zing.

- Right, it makes you wanna take another bite.

- Exactly.

- I'm gonna make some coconut pickle, too.

- I would love to see that.

- So grated fresh coconut, isn't it a lotta work to get that happening?

- Yeah, but I make my husband [laughs] to like crack all the coconuts.

So I do a couple big pinches of salt, black pepper again.

The cayenne peppers, and I go a little heavy with this because-- - Wow.

- Yeah, are you scared?

- No, I'm not scared.

[Sam laughing] - A little bit a lime juice.

So let's get you trying some of those coconut sambals.

- Yes, give me some barbecue in the palm of my hand.

- Pulled pork works.

That's gotta be sprinkled on.

[laughs] - It's a barbecue shooter.

- Like barbecue shots.

[Sam laughing] - That's really good.

The barbecue itself is kind of sweet and sour, and then that's crunchy and happening.

- Yeah, it's got a little afterburn to it, which is nice.

- It is burning now, yeah.

[both laughing] I'll be out there at the bar.

[calm music] - Hi!

- Hello!

- Thank you so much for your patience.

- If you haven't noticed, Sam has a lotta plans for me here in Kentucky, and her next plan involves a woman named Lora.

- Hi!

- Vivian, this is Lora Smith.

- Hey, Lora.

- Welcome to Kentucky.

- Thank you.

- She does a ton of amazing work with Appalachian foodways.

I know that you're hungry.

- Yes.

- So we gotta get you some food going.

- You know what I should have.

- Yep.

Is that the Vivian order?

I'm gonna send out a little extra of everything.

Let's double up on the egg order.

- You've been to these pop-ups before?

- I have, yeah, I've been coming for almost as long as she's been having 'em.

- I think her food is delicious.

- It's amazing.

[calm music] - The pickle really makes it for me 'cause everything's soft and kind of round, and that punctuates the experience.

- It's got some nice spice on it.

Cheers.

- Cheers.

[glasses clink] Lora invited me to my first holler for some garden gleaning, Appalachian style.

- Hi.

- Hey, I'm Vivian.

- Hi, I'm Sheryl.

- Nice to meet you.

- Well, welcome to the farm.

[laughs] - Thank you.

Everybody in this area probably has their own special recipe for chow-chow?

- Yes, you can put many different things in it.

At the end of the season, we would go to the garden, and we would pick out everything that was left.

And then you would chop it up for chow-chow.

- Let's go get some whatever we get.

- All right, we'll go glean from the garden.

[laughs] - Oh, glean, we're gleaning.

[calm music] - All the different peppers in the garden makes the chow-chow beautiful, so all the different colors you can get.

And of course, you'd have to have some green to make it pretty, too.

- I see a lot of red tomatoes, and I see green tomatoes.

Are both appropriate for chow-chow?

- Not the red tomatoes, they're too soft.

- They're too soft.

- You need the crunchier vegetables.

- This is a Caraflex cabbage, and it has the pointy head.

It's more of a shorter-day cabbage, so it's easier to grow in the fall.

- I get asked a lot, what's the difference between Southern food and Appalachian food, and there's a lotta similarities, but we have winter here.

So we have a lot of preservation, fermentation, curing of meat, all of those, 'cause you had to get through the winter.

And I love what you were saying, Regina, because it's not enough for it to taste good.

It also needs to be beautiful.

- Yes.

- People take a lot of pride in that.

- Yes, they do.

- And so we're up in a holler now.

- We're in a holler.

- Tell me what, how would you define a holler?

- You have to turn around to come back out.

There's no freeway, it's a dead end.

- In the morning, looking down the holler about 10 o'clock or so, the mist will all be up in the air, and you'll see just little clouds and little puffs of it coming up.

- Beautiful.

[calm music] ♪ Appalachia, how sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That falls upon ♪ - What most people know about this part of Kentucky might come from grainy 1960s newsreels about the war on poverty, but those snippets of life don't give you a true picture of a place and its people.

What I find is that Eastern Kentucky's no-nonsense, frugal-minded foodways remind me of home.

Regina and Lora are taking me to a place in Whitesburg, Kentucky, to make chow-chow.

Once it was the community's high school.

Now, it's a gathering place to nurture food traditions and local entrepreneurs.

- Well, welcome, Vivian, to the Whitesburg and the CANE Kitchen here, and I think they've been cooking up some good stuff already.

- What's this?

- Cooked meat and potatoes, it's neck bones and pork ribs.

Old people would call it neck bones and taters, but that's all we were raised on, that's-- - I like neck bones and taters.

- So I wanna introduce you to Carolyn.

- Hey.

- She's one of our chow-chow experts.

- Hello, how are you?

- You're a chow-chow expert.

[laughing] - Well, I'm old enough to be an expert, so I assume so.

[laughs] - Well, good.

[calm music] - What we done, there's just a regular cream can.

We got it warm last night and took the rim off.

[can clunking] - I been canning or helping can since I was four or five years old.

That was our way a life.

Chow-chow was very important to us because just about every family that I know eats soup beans or pinto beans, and we had to have condiments.

- Right, to make them-- - Yeah.

[laughs] - Exciting.

- Yeah, real exciting.

- Or at least appealing.

- Yes.

- Exciting's probably a strong word.

[calm music] [cans clunking] - Now, this is ideal, this right here.

- That is?

- It's the ideal red.

It is still firm.

- So we're just gonna mix everything together.

- So what's the ratio you're looking for here?

- I don't really have a ratio because I just mix what I have gleaned in the garden.

And then I put it in the jars, boil my jars and my lids.

And then I would pour distilled water, I don't use tap water.

I do still use vinegar.

- Where's the vinegar at?

- I would take a tablespoon in each one instead of mixing it all together.

- Oh!

- I use a cup of vinegar to a cup of sugar.

- Cup of sugar, okay.

- And I boil that and pour it over it.

And you don't?

- I don't.

- She's fermenting hers.

- Yeah.

- Do you have some of yours here?

- Yeah.

- Me?

- So we can taste them side by side.

- Yep.

- This is Regina's, and this is Carolyn's.

If I like one of them better than the other, you will never know.

- Okay, fair enough.

- So don't worry, there will not be a winner today.

[all laughing] [calm music] They are very different and very similar.

I don't know how those two things-- - It's the vinegar probably.

- Well, they're both kind of sweet, but I can taste the spice in a different way, like the turmeric and the mustard seeds.

But they're both great.

So what are some other things that are identified with this region of Kentucky?

- Everything was either pickled or dried.

- Salted down.

- Or dried.

- The meat, dad would kill the hogs, and he would salt them down and hang 'em in the can house.

- Everything that we ate was what we produced, either from the land themselves, or we picked it from the land.

I used to go to the woods and get spicewood for spicewood tea for Granny.

- Or the beech trees, and we would chew it as beechnut gum.

- Are these memories sweet?

- Yeah, it was our life, it was who we are.

[laughing] - Mm-hm, they are very sweet, very sweet.

- We all had very good childhoods.

[calm music] - Doesn't make sense to go on pickle quest at this moment in time without taking a look at kimchi.

Kimchi is the fermented funky Korean pickle we all seem to have fallen in love with.

Koreans have loved it for centuries.

It's their most famous form of banchan.

Banchan are side dishes or snacks served with every meal.

But now, we all get it, and you can find kimchi on menus and in refrigerators all over the U.S.

I'm visiting my friend Mike Lee, and his banchan game is strong.

- How are you?

- Awesome, how have you been?

- I'm good, I'm good.

Mike got his start in sushi restaurants.

Now he runs what I think is the best sushi spot in the state.

Thank you for doing this.

- No, my pleasure, my pleasure.

- So you're Korean.

- I am.

- But you grew up here in the States?

- I did, I came to the United States when I was about nine or 10.

[calm music] - So when you came here at nine, where did y'all move?

- Washington, Missouri, Oklahoma City.

- You started school here with basically no English skills.

- No, and me and my older brother was going to the school, and we had no communication skills.

And back then, they didn't have any type of system in place in school, public schools.

So there was one lady that worked in the school that took her time after school every day for about two, three hours to just teach us English separately, without getting paid additionally or anything.

And we actually went out and tried to find the lady to be able to thank her.

- Oh, wow.

- But there was, it was really difficult because it was a very long time ago, first place, and we didn't, we can't remember the name.

- But she changed our life.

- Yes, yes, she showed us very like warm kindness, like that we very much needed.

- Pickles can really become the MVP of a dish when you're talking about something as modest as simple as boiled chicken and rice.

I'm gonna dazzle you with my knowledge of Korean food.

[Michael laughs] This is called banchan, right?

- Yes, it is.

[laughs] That's because our fundamental, it's just like bread.

For us, it's rice or some type of a starch.

Back in the days whenever things were not plentiful, we would make them intentionally very salty so that we only at a little bit and have most of the starch.

- So these are the condiments that you would have with every meal, essentially.

- The few of very, very many.

Banchan basically is endless, it's not a certain set.

It doesn't have to be out of cabbage, it doesn't have to be like bean sprouts.

It's basically anything that you make it to be a side dish.

This just came from Korea, baby octopus that's been fermented, and it's delicious.

I hope you like it, yeah, you should try that.

It is a little salty.

- Oh, my god, that's so good.

- Yeah, it's really good, and it's like a, we call it rice killer, because like your bowl of rice, you can finish that entire thing very quickly.

And this is the fermented napa cabbage kimchi.

This is kinda like the most widely known version of the kimchi that I made.

- Widely known and now bastardized by all the white people.

[Michael laughing] - It has to be fermented, meaning that it has to be salted, right, like as in a country ham, it preserves it.

And a lot of the old-school dishes, whether it's from America, Europe, or Asia, it's preserving, because we didn't have refrigerations and freezers back then.

But in the end result is very abundant umami flavor that comes from the aging and the fermenting process.

[light jazz music] - Michael's a big gift-giver, and last year, he gave me two types of kimchi.

And I said thank you, of course, but I asked if next time, he would just show me how to make it.

Today, Michael gives me that gift, a trip to his favorite Korean market and then back to his house to make kimchi with his family.

- So this is one of the few Korean markets in town.

- So it's pretty small.

- Yeah, but the size, that's what makes this place special, just like, you know, restaurants, smaller restaurants, and like their dedicated menu items.

So everything in here, there's always purpose, you know?

- Hey.

[Michael speaks in foreign language] [clerks speaking in foreign language] So what are we getting in here?

- We're just gonna go pick up some few things that we're gonna be cooking tonight.

[upbeat music] So here is banchan.

It's endless possibility, really.

- So you like this one?

- Mm-hmm.

- A seasoned lotus fruit.

Yeah, this is another really good one, stem of the garlic.

- I've always thrown that away.

- Everybody throws it away, but this is one of my favorite banchan.

- Oh, awesome.

- Another favorite of mine, fermented squid.

- Awesome.

- You enjoy that.

- I might have to eat some of my seasoned squid in the car.

- Yes.

[Vivian laughs] Don't drop any, it'll smell really bad.

[both laughing] [calm music] - So this whole aisle right here is for kimchi.

- Kimchi.

Most important ingredient, good-quality pepper powder.

This one is the only one that actually comes is like the 100% real Korean pepper powder.

- Oh, wow.

- But this is supposed to be like ultra-hot.

[calm music] We'll pick up some napa cabbage.

You need to pick out like heavy and dense ones.

So those are the ones that's good for like kimchi.

Feel this one, that one's nice and dense as well.

- That's a good one?

- Mm-hmm.

- And those are daikon radishes?

- Daikon radish, yeah.

- So you grew up speaking Korean in your home?

- Yeah, yeah.

- And your parents speak Korean?

- Yeah, they don't speak any English because the job they had didn't require any communication.

That's why they worked that job.

The job was chicken sexing.

- Sexing.

- So sexing, yeah, yeah.

- What?

- That was hard to always explain to my friends and teachers what that was.

- What is that?

- So they have take a baby chicken and be able to tell if it's male or female.

[laughs] But they would throw the male away because they can't lay the eggs.

I followed them couple times when I was young just to see them working, and we were playing with the little chicks right before they died.

[laughs] - Not their dream job.

- No, no, my dad was working at a well-known company in Korea but one day moved us over for a better education.

But yeah, I think there's always like a little bit of homesick continuously for them.

[calm guitar music] - Hey.

- How are you?

- I'm good, how are you?

- Miss you.

- I love your house.

- Thank you.

[laughs] - So this is my mother-in-law.

That's my father, and running away is father-in-law.

[all laughing] And this is my mother.

- Hi.

- That'll be the extent of the conversation.

- Okay.

[laughs] - Everything else, we'll have to translate.

[calm music] Jung, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

- Chef.

[all laughing] - You told me that your parents came to the States so you could have a better education.

- Mm-hmm.

- So what did she think when you decided to become a chef?

[mother speaks in foreign language] - Not good.

[laughs] - Not good?

- Yeah, she didn't want me to go to restaurant industry.

Especially back then, it's not a glorious job.

- No, my parents didn't make nearly the sacrifices that yours did, but when I told them that I wanted to be a chef, they were, my mom said, "I didn't do everything "that I've done for you to be a short-order cook."

That was-- - That was exactly what she said kinda in Korean.

- What's next?

- Making kimchi.

- Oh, good.

- The staple Korean food.

- Yes, so you told me that you have a whole separate refrigerator for your kimchi because you don't wanna stink up the house.

- Exactly, it's out in the garage.

[laughs] - So this is napa cabbage that you've quartered.

- Yep, quartered, heavily salted.

We julienne the daikon, and we mix it with the sauce a little bit at a time, and we would stuff it into there.

- Oh, so you stuff the daikon inside of the cabbage with the sauce.

- Yeah, the foundation or the base of the sauce, pepper powder, some rice, and you cook it and you mix it.

So it's like a porridge kind of thing.

Fish sauce and/or salted baby shrimps, and we have that here.

- Oh, wow.

- They stink.

[laughs] - Holy, yes, they do!

[all laughing] - I warned ya.

[calm music] People always assume because I'm a sushi chef, like, you know, "Oh, your knives are gonna be like razor sharp."

And I was like, "Yeah, come to my house."

[laughs] - Right.

- I haven't sharpened them in like half a year.

[laughs] - Like that?

- Mm-hmm.

- But not that long.

- Just a little bit thinner.

- Little bit thinner?

Sorry, thank you.

- You can cut that out.

- Okay.

- So we'll put some gloves on so we don't accidentally rub our eyes.

- Where do we go?

- On the floor.

- Oh!

- That's traditionally how we do it.

- Really!

- We can get you a baby chair.

- I'm down here, now we have to do this.

[all laughing] - She said you cut it too big.

- I did, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

- No, no, no.

- It was just too big, I'm so sorry.

[Michael speaks in foreign language] [mother speaks in foreign language] - So basically the way you do it is like you actually mix a little bit of the paste.

- Oh, Michael.

- So you take one, and you start from the bottom, right?

And make sure you concentrate more flavor in the inside.

- Okay.

- 'Cause that is the thickest part, you've gotta make sure that is heavily seasoned more than the rest of it.

But that's kinda like the art of making kimchi.

- And that's why is so laborious.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Oh, look, she's tying it around.

- You want the seasoning to stay inside.

It helps the fermentation process better.

Kinda wrap it over so you're keeping everything inside.

It's like a little ball.

- Oh, wow.

- You make kimchi for the entire year, right?

So as it ages, you get different flavor and textures from the kimchi.

So it's like it's never the same.

[calm music] - You keep saying your parents worked in a chicken-sexing plant.

What was the hardest thing about coming here?

[speaking in foreign language] - She said it was very lonely because like she doesn't have friends, and she couldn't communicate.

- Right.

- So she felt very lonely in the beginning.

- Well, this is, that was spicy.

- Yeah.

[speaks in foreign language] So we're going to the table here.

[father speaks in foreign language] [calm music] - And y'all have been in Durham longer than anywhere else?

- Yes, before, because I was moving around like every six month, I was averaging working at like two and up to three restaurants every year for about like eight or 10 years or so.

But when I got to North Carolina and meeting like a lot of awesome local chefs and just the community, I think that's when I began like growing as a cook, being more passionate.

It helped me a lot.

I stopped here, and this was not my destination.

But I think I learned a lot more staying in one place than just hopping around.

- And you found your community here.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And your family.

- Yes.

[calm music] - For Michael's family, kimchi is more than a fermented pickle.

It's an expression of love, an expression of their Korean identity.

For Michael, it seems to represent his reverence for the sacrifices his parent made to bring their family to the U.S. Hey, Ben, you see this?

- Mm-hmm.

- The Mills make the kraut like with a whole head of collards, which is kind of like the way they make kimchi.

You want a piece of kraut?

- I do.

[crunching] That is so good.

- I think it's funkier than kimchi.

And maybe it's just like the degree that they let it ferment.

[calm music] All right, let's get it in the oven.

I'm gonna put the chicken on top of this kraut and roast it.

Do you think the kids will eat the kraut?

- No.

First of all, it's green.

- It's funky.

You got on your picklin' shirt.

- I do, every day, baby.

- Every day, you're picklin'.

Whether it's a moment or a morsel, pickling something makes it last longer.

Obviously, I'm talking about food but also about how when we hold on to our own unique pickling traditions, that act preserves and strengthens our identity.

It honors our past and informs our future.

I wish I could figure out how to pickle this moment.

[calm music] [upbeat guitar music] - To order "Somewhere South" on DVD, visit shopPBS.org.

This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.