Charles Zeran, Executive Chef of Four Moons Restaurant in Orangeburg, SC, is the winner of 9 DiRoNA (Distinguished Restaurants of North America) Awards and 9 Wine Spectator Awards in his previous kitchens (Stone Manor, Middletown, Maryland; Stars Waterfront Cafe, Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina; and The Lodge at Glendorn, a AAA Four Diamond and Relais & Chateaux property in Bradford, Pennsylvania.)

Not bad for a former attorney and self-taught chef who started his professional cooking career at the age of 32. His delicious and visually arresting dishes are the result of his interest in molecular gastronomy coupled with his own broad experience and unique vision.

He talked with us about the winding road that brought him to where he is today, his favorite restaurants, his Western Tennessee childhood food memories of peach ice cream on Independence Day and traditional New Year’s meals, as well as his guilty food pleasures…

When did first you start getting interested in food and cooking? Please share some early cooking memories…

I have cooked all my life for fun. Even as a child. Some early food memories: making caramel fudge and taffy with my grandmother in western Tennessee where I grew up. My father making Steak Diane in the seventies when I was about 10 and waiting for it to catch fire when the brandy was added. Traveling with my dad as a child to New Orleans and having beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe Du Monde, and to Grand Bahama Island and having cracked conch right off the boat and Johnny cakes prepared by the native Bahamians.

It must have been difficult for you to make the leap from your original career to food and beverage. What happened that gave you the impetus to make that leap?

I became a lawyer I think more because it was expected and for the money more than because it was something I really wanted to do. Not because there had ever been a lawyer in my family, but because I had excelled in school and was expected to do something like a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief.

After 7 years of divorce law in Northern Florida and Western North Carolina, I decided that life was too short to do something that I really didn’t love and began to think what would be better. I always loved to cook. The first food I ever sold was homemade lasagna to Italian restaurants while I was still an attorney in North Carolina. Made the pasta and dried it on a clothes rack.

One day I decided that I had had enough and spent the next six months winding up my practice, took a 3 month adventure around the Western United States looking for somewhere I wanted to be more than the Appalachian region of North Carolina. I ended up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state and took a job in a roadside diner cooking breakfast. After about 4 months of this, I met the owner of a bistro in one of the tourist towns in the Cascades who offered me a line cook job, which I declined. But we hit it off being the same age and both growing up outside Memphis, so we had a lot of common history.

A few days later the manager of her kitchen was fired and she called me and asked me if I wanted to run their kitchen my first chef position with 4 months of restaurant experience and not a clue. Trial by fire.

What kind of cooking do you most admire?

Avant garde. When I want to feed I like it simple, but when I want to dine, I want to be entertained and I want something to think about, not just chew on.

What ingredients do you especially like to work with?

Seafood is probably my favorite medium. Especially tuna, scallops, and any really fresh fish that I can either use raw or cook. I also really like raw or practically raw meats lamb, venison, and good beef made into wonderful tatakis, carpaccios, and tartares. I love Asian ingredients and flavors, especially Japanese the flavors are so complex, but seem so pure.

Who are your food inspirations and why…Also, who are your favorite chefs and cookbook/food authors?

Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Homaro Cantu, etc for their creativity in molecular gastronomy. Thomas Keller for the purity and intensity of taste of his food, and the subtle layers of flavor. Michel Richard of Citronelle for his playfulness, and the mixing of pastry techniques into savory dishes. Rick Tramonto for the same reasons as both Keller and Richard. Masaharu Morimoto for his use of western techniques with Asian ingredients and vice versa without ending up with fusion for fusion sake, which I hate.

What part does travel play in your food inspirations?

Only incidentally. Haven’t done much traveling for food’s sake.

Where do you like to go and what cuisines inspire you?

The Keys for the fresh seafood. DC for some of the restaurants I used to go to when I lived in that area Citronelle, Jose Andres’ Cafe Atlantico, The Inn at Little Washington, Persimmon, Kinkaid’s.

Any favorite meals you’d like to share?

The Inn at Little Washington for the best service I have ever experienced. Michelle Richard’s Citronelle for the whimsical food, like the silver penguin statuette carrying an egg filled with scrambled eggs topped with caviar.

What do you like to do to blow off the stresses of the kitchen?

When the day is done I am relaxed. I found that the difference between being a lawyer and being a chef is the type of stress being an attorney involves chronic stress the same client with the same issues continues for months. Being a chef involves acute stress when the day is done, the day is done. Chronic stress is draining. Acute stress is a rush.

What tips would you offer to someone considering a career as a chef?

Don’t — unless you really have the passion. If it’s not something you have to do because there is something inside you that makes you, it will be a miserable career and you won’t do it well. But if that thing is inside you, it’s like Confucius said “If you find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

What advantages do you bring to the table as a self educated chef?

Not knowing what the rules are, I don’t know better than to break them.

Would you like to publish a cookbook someday? If so, what would its focus be?

Maybe the crossover between sweet and savory.

Favorite comfort foods?

Biscuits and gravy. Steak. Mashed potatoes with white truffle oil. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon.

Favorite barbecue memory?

We always barbecued a baby goat on the Fourth of July when I was growing up. It cooked most of the day. While it was cooking, we made a stew in a big cauldron in the back yard using all the game we had in the freezer from the previous hunting season we stirred it with a boat paddle. And we finished the meal with peach ice cream we churned with a hand cranked ice cream freezer.

Favorite Southern meal?

When I was a child in West Tennessee on New Year’s Day, it was a tradition to have pork roast, turnip greens, black eyed peas cooked with fat back, and corn bread. You always poured the “pot liquor” from the peas over the corn bread. And you always had to leave one pea on the plate for good luck in the coming year.

Favorite guilty food pleasures (sweet or salty)?

Foie Gras pan seared with sauted blackberries on brioche. White truffles shaved onto almost anything.

Favorite wines to relax with?

Syrahs from the Northern Rhone. New Zealand Pinots and Chards. Steely dry Rieslings from Alsace. Douros from Portugal. Good reds from Chile. Chateau Margaux Pavilon Blanc. Oh, and Krug if you’re buying.

As a working chef, your time is at a premium. What restaurants would you like to find time to visit someday? (ie. El Bulli, The French Laundry, etc.)

El Bulli. Alinea, Tru, Morimoto, Per Se.

What’s your favorite dish to make at home?

Plumbers don’t find the time to fix their own pipes, mechanics don’t find the time to fix their own cars. Me too. If I have to, something on the grill.

Can you share a recipe for the readers of HuggingtheCoast.Com?

Here one from the Raw Bites menu at Four Moons: Day Boat Scallops with Sweet
Spicy Chili Vinaigrette, Hot and Sour Pickled Mango, and Tobikko Ice.

Ingredients:

1 lb (approx) fresh scallops (You will want extremely fresh dry [not processed] scallops,
the larger the better, preferably day boat harvested. If you have U-10 size (under 10
per lb) scallops, allow two scallops per person for an appetizer portion. If using 10-20
size allow three or four.)

For the Hot and Sour Pickled Mango:

1 c. water
1/2 c. rice wine vinegar
1/2 c. sugar
2 T salt
1/2 t. whole cloves
1 t. mustard seeds
1 t. peppercorns
1 T. chopped fresh ginger
1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes

1 large mango, peeled and cut into thin slices

Bring first 9 ingredients (thru red pepper flakes) to a boil in a medium, non-reactive
saucepan and allow to cool to lukewarm. Strain well, pour over thinly sliced mango, and
marinate for several hours.

For the Tobikko Ice:

2 1/2 c. cucumber juice (using a vegetable juicer), strained
1/2 c. simple syrup (see Cook’s Note)
3 oz wasabi tobikko caviar (available at some Asian markets or try your local sushi
restaurant)
Salt to taste
Sriracha pepper sauce to taste

Mix well and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions.

For the Vinaigrette:

Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce (available at Asian markets and many supermarkets)
Rice Wine Vinegar
Soy sauce
Lime Juice
(Proportions of the above are to taste, but you are looking for a sweet and sour spicy citrus flavor.)
Olive Oil

Slowly drizzle in oil while whisking to reach vinaigrette consistency.

To Serve:

Slice each scallop very thinly into 6 - 8 coin shaped slices and arrange on serving plates.
Drizzle the chili vinaigrette over the scallops and let marinate for a couple of minutes.
Arrange drained mango slices on scallops. Garnish the plates with a scoop of the
tobikko ice and whole cilantro leaves.

Serves 4 as an appetizer.

COOK’S NOTE: To make Simple Syrup, use equal measures (by volume) of water and
sugar. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan, add the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Click here to read yesterday’s Four Moon’s Restaurant Review.

• Southern Hoe Cakes from Group Recipes

• Fried Corn Meal Mush From About.Com: Southern Food

• Lavender Flavored Lemonade from Southern Sandra

• Buttermilk Fried Chicken from Simply Recipes

• Carolina Fish Muddle from History.Org

• Colonial Corn Pudding from Foodreference.Com

• Georgia Peanut Salsa from Taste of Home

• Thomas Jefferson’s Ice Cream From Slashfood

• Colonial Innkeeper’s Pie from Cooks.Com

Enjoy the Holiday!

Join us tomorrow to enjoy an interesting series of historical 4th of July photos taken across the United States, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Native only to a small part of North and South Carolina, the Venus Flytrap is a carnivorous plant that sustains itself in nutrient-poor, boggy soil by trapping and eating insects and small animals that find their way into its trap.

For an video overview of venus flytraps, their habitat, and how they trap their prey, Persuasion2 has made an informative video which you can see below (or here ).

You might also want to see these two wonderful videos as well:

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing Father’s Day Recipes.

John Travolta may have said it best in the movie, Pulp Fiction, “It’s the little differences…”

One of the things that makes travel enlightening (whether it’s a trip from Charleston, SC to Asheville, NC eating regional barbecue along the way or a longer journey to India, Morocco, Korea, Malaysia, or Fiji sampling local foods and flavors) are all those little differences.

When you travel, all the common daily signposts of your everyday life are replaced at every turn with (sometimes slightly, sometimes vastly) different options and opportunities.

You can’t just pop down to your default neighborhood restaurant after work, absentmindedly order the daily special, and bolt right after finishing; because there is no default, everyday way of doing things the first time one visits somewhere new. There is no “regular’ or “the usual” to order.

There’s just you: having a fresh experience with a new place: learning to navigate new customs, people, and ideas; and in a way, made more than a little new yourself by the encounter.

As the American author of the food blog, From Argentina With Love writes about her experience with one of the “little differences” she encountered on visits to her husband’s home country:

“This is how I knew I was going to fall in love with Argentina:

Argentinos eat gnocchi together on the 29th of every month, and it’s a national holiday.

Excuse me while I swoon.

Yes, that’s right–people all over the country get together on the same day every month just to eat gnocchi. Now, that’s my idea of a national holiday! I didn’t grow up with any sort of food traditions that are celebrated like this on a national level. But in Argentina, the tradition is that on the 29th day of each and every month, one is supposed to eat gnocchi. Okay, twist my arm…

Argentinos are fond of the expression ‘a full belly, a happy heart,’ and on the 29th they prepare Ñoquis (as they spell it) at home and invite friends over to share the meal; it’s also quite common to find ñoquis on the menu in restaurants on this day. Either way, diners end up both full and happy.”

You can read more of her post about her experiences eating gnocchi on the 29th, (as well as her recipe for gnocchi) here.

You might also want to read Heidi Swanson’s informative post on How to Make Gnocchi Like an Italian Grandmother here.

More than 20 million Argentinos have at least one Italian forefather, making Italians the largest ethnic group in Argentina (giving them the third largest concentration of people of Italian origin in the world).

As a result of this concentration, food influenced by Italian cuisine is popular and readily available in most parts of Argentina.

Uruguay, Argentina’s tiny neighbor to the east, also celebrates gnocchi day each 29th. 1.5 million people in Uruguay are of Italian ancestry, (almost half of its population) so Italian cuisine exerts a large culinary influence there as well.

What “little differences” have you found on your travels (whether around the world or to the next town) and how did they change you?

Spring is here and there’s nothing that celebrates Spring quite like a Southern festival…good music, good food, good company!

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, here’s a roundup of some of the best Southern food festivals for Spring and Early Summer 2008.

Highlights of the season include Charleston, SC’s world famous Spoleto Festival, the International Bar-B-Q Festival in Owensboro, KY, Tryon, NC’s Blue Ridge Barbecue Festival, and the Appalachian Evening Summer Concert Series and Appalachian Dinner in Robbinsville, NC.

There is nothing quite like an oyster roast. Standing elbow to elbow with fellow oyster lovers we await the bounty about to be served; oyster knives at the ready, shucking gloves tucked in our belts, bowls of crimson hot sauce scattered across the rough-hewn tables.

A popular coastal tradition, the best oyster roasts are both sacred and informal celebrations of the natural flavors of the sea that ideally take place not far from the waters from which the oysters were taken.

If you’d like to hold your own oyster roast, you’ll have to order several bushels of oysters from your local seafood supplier, but it’s much better to harvest them yourself if you’re lucky to live in an area with an abundance of oysters. There’s a nice article here about the finer points of gathering oysters and running a traditional oyster roast.

If you prefer to grill your oysters instead, Coastal Living has some good tips and recipes here.

According to Charlestonlowcountry.com, oysters are an excellent source of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C, and D. Four or five medium size oysters supply the recommended daily allowance of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and manganese. Charlestonlowcountry.com also has some nice in-home recipes here.

After you’ve held your roast, don’t forget to recycle your oyster shells so that they can be used to form new oyster beds for the next generation of oysters. South Carolina residents can recycle their oyster shells at various DNR oyster shell recycling locations. North Carolina also has an excellent oyster shell recycling program.

(Here’s a photo we took of an oyster bed vista in McClellanville, SC.)

Also, below is a taste of a few of the many photos we took at Pethelpers’ 2008 Sucking It Up to Save Lives Oyster Roast at Bowen’s Island in Charleston, SC. The event raised over $13,000 to benefit the new no-kill animal shelter.

While we were at the oyster roast, we were fortunate enough to come across something small and hard in one of our oysters…a pearl!

Alas, unlike Florida’s George and Leslie Brock who were lucky enough to come across a really valuable purple oyster while eating our Apalachicola Selects, our “Pethelper Pearl” is small and rough textured; a rare specimen mainly remarkable for its extremely high sentimental (if not financial) value.

By the way, if you’re curious about how oysters make pearls, click here.

With its sleek modernist lines reminiscent of Bauhaus architecture, South Carolina’s Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse may be less charming than its neighbor, the Morris Island Lighthouse, however it still provides a useful service.

According to the Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse Page at LighthouseFriends.Com:

“When erosion threatened the Morris Island Lighthouse, located south of the entrance to Charleston Harbor, the decision was made to place a replacement beacon on Sullivan’s Island, north of the harbor’s entrance. Although the triangular tower, built of concrete and steel and clad in a skin of aluminum, doesn’t have much Southern charm, it does have some redeeming qualities. Inside the tower, the keepers of the light are treated to air conditioning and an elevator that can quickly whisk them skyward. After the elevator ride, it is still necessary to scale a small staircase to reach the lantern room, where a powerful light source is housed. Originally, the light produced an amazing 28 million candlepower, but this powerful beam proved dangerous and was downgraded to a light of just over a million candlepower that has a range of twenty-six miles.”

By the way, with the exception of Boston Light, the oldest station in America, all lighthouses in the U.S. are fully automated, although some properties may have on-site caretakers to help prevent vandalism or to run tours through the facility.

You can read some interesting lighthouse trivia here. If you’re interested in learning more about the historical role played by lighthouses in both South and North Carolina, you can read excerpts online from Terrance Zepke’s book, Lighthouses of the Carolinas: A Short History and Guide.

Want a taste of what it’s like to live in a lighthouse? Below are 3 cookbooks full of recipes from lighthouse kitchens,

• Cooking Lighthouse Style: Favorite Recipes from Coast to Coast by Fred Stonehouse

• The Lighthouse Cookbook by Anita Stewart

• Horton Point Lighthouse Cookbook by The Southold Historical Society

Charleston, SC’s too big to have made this list of The Best Fishing Towns in America from Field and Stream. (The places on this particular list all have less than 100,000 residents. Charleston has almost 119,000.) However, scenic Beaufort, SC did make #17 on the list.

Charleston was named one of the best fishing spots in the South on another F&S list that was mentioned in a previous post).

Here’s the full list of notable fishing towns…

1. Glenwood Spring, CO
2. Mountain Home, AR
3. Traverse City, MI
4. Bozeman, MT
5. Minocqua, WI
6. Apalachicola, FL
7. Nantucket, MA
8. Bend, OR
9. Guntersville, AL
10. Morehead City, NC
11. Missoula, MT
12. Ely, MN
13. Page, AZ
14. Driggs, ID
15. Jasper, TX
16. Tahlequah, OK
17. Beaufort, SC
18. Eufaula, AL
19. Redding, CA
20. Montauk, NY

If you regularly enjoy boating, fishing, or surfing it is essential to keep an eye on the tide. Here’s some handy tools and websites for the purpose:

Sciway.net has some free online tide prediction tables here that cover from Wilmington, NC to the entrance of the Savannah River as does the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

If you have a Palm OS PDA handheld, Tide Tool displays the tide and current graphs and tables for 6,900 locations worldwide. It also displays the times of sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset, and the moon phases until the year 2031.

Tide Tool is free software. You can download it at http://www.tucows.com/preview/34687.

If you have a Windows OS PDA handheld, NavStation Tides from Woodpecker Software is available for $40. You can download a free trial version of the software here.

According to a recent article on Foxbusiness.Com, the Southeastern United States is the best place to retire for those on fixed incomes. (The article goes on to list the American West and South and Central America on the #2 and #3 positions, respectively.)

As John Shelton Reed once said, “Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines and cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.”

Please feel free to enjoy our Southern Coastal Life MP3 Playlist which is filled with 30+ streaming songs that celebrate the pleasures of Southern food, fishing, surfing, and life spent on the water. (Additional music will be periodically added.)

Artists include: The Andrews Sisters, Andy Griffith, Van Morrison, Elijah and the Ebonites, The Weavers, Tom Waits, James Taylor, Carl Perkins, The Drifters, Dizzy Gillespie, Smiley Burnette, Fats Waller, Martha and the Vandellas, Hank Williams Sr., Tim McGraw, Jimmy Buffet, James Taylor, Ryan Adams, Stringbean, Little Milton, Louis Jordan, Dar Williams, and The Preservation Hall Band…good stuff!

You can listen to it here.

A barefoot chef from Asheville, North Carolina won the Oyster Shucking Competition in Charleston, South Carolina’s 25th Annual Lowcountry Oyster Festival.

Named one of the top 20 events in the Southeast by the Southeastern Tourism Society, two tractor-trailers filled with 65,000 pounds of oysters rolled onto the grounds at Boone Hall Plantation to kick off the festival.

Winner Tres Hundertmark, chef/owner of The Lobster Trap of Asheville, NC, shucked an average of one raw oyster every 2.6 seconds.

“I had just placed in a shucking competition in Connecticut,” Hundertmark commented. “So I felt I would at least rank in the top 5.” But even Hundertmark didn’t expect to take 1st place.

The Oyster Shucking Competition entailed opening as many raw oysters as possible in 3 minutes. Hundertmark blasted the opposition away with an amazing 69 oysters in 3 minutes. (That’s 1 oyster every 2.6 seconds, beating the five-time champ by 5 oysters.)

Located in downtown Asheville, NC at 35 Patton Avenue, Tres Hundertmark has cooked for such restaurants as the House of Blues in New Orleans, Louisiana, Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, the Chanticleer on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, and at the track at Kentucky’s Churchill Downs.

The award winning outdoor sportsman magazine Field and Stream, recently named the Charleston Jetties one of the best fishing spots in the Southern United States.

Considered by the magazine to be the third best fishing spots in SC, the Santee-Cooper Area took first place in the state, with the Lake Russell Area listed in second place.

Here’s the full list of notable fishing spots in the South after the jump…

(more…)

You’re just one click away from our new and frequently updated

Hugging the Coast Photo Gallery on FlickR!

Featuring photos of coastal living taken throughout the Carolinas, we’ll also be adding even more photos celebrating Southern food (such as boiled peanuts, soft shell crab, grits, fried shrimp, and pulled pork barbecue!), as well as photo essays showcasing the vanishing way of life of the commercial fisherman.

Here’s a taste of a few of our featured photos…many more will be added soon!