Cook’s Country’s Bryan Roof Makes Paella and Talks Farming with Matthew Raiford

We meet at the chicken coop, where Raiford is feeding the flock bright-yellow turmeric-infused rice, leftovers from a meal he made for his daughter days earlier. He talks sweetly to the chickens as he tosses the feed, just like he talks to me. He’s equally kind to the plants. 

I ask about a small bonfire of burning brush in front of the main house. Raiford says he often cooks large paellas over the fire for parties. 

We spend more than an hour walking around a small portion of the 28-acre property as he tells stories of the previous five generations of his family who lived here. He points out the house where his mother was born and a once-upon-a-time one-room schoolhouse that until 1954 was the only school for 20 miles that Black children could attend. We walk through a patch of wild huckleberry bushes and amble through the muscadine vines. 

Raiford pulls bunches of carrots from soft, black dirt in raised beds and then points out the massive iron-and-log sugarcane press gifted to his great-grandparents on their wedding day in 1919. 

After he explains how he roasts oysters on a panel of fire-heated corrugated metal, we end our tour near the back of the property, where he introduces me to his passel of long‑haired, spotted Ossabaw Island hogs, which he summons with a pitch-perfect “SOOEY!” 

Throughout the morning, Raiford talks of the soil as “a living thing” that needs to be cared for and nurtured. He claims he’s more chef than farmer but says he’s finding his way. “I understand food and cooking, and I’m learning about farming.”

As we talk, he offers wisdom about planting techniques, symbiotic relationships between different species, and various culinary and medicinal uses of plants that, to the untrained eye, look like invasive weeds. He also speaks to the appeal of cooking what you grow.

“There’s a whole difference between going to the store and buying something and having the flavor of something you raised or grew. When I go out and eat a tomato from here, that thing was not pulled off when it was green and put somewhere until it was ripe and then shipped to me. I’m eating it at the point that I’m supposed to eat it.”

We make our way into the satellite kitchen attached to the main house, where Raiford does much of his culinary experimentation and prep work for events on the property. “I spend a lot of time in here. Sometimes doing nothing,” he says with a smile. 

The space resembles a garage-turned-kitchen, with concrete floors and a wide, live-edge butcher block counter running down the center. A large bowl of freshly harvested turmeric root, still covered in dirt, sits on the counter. Wooden shelves hold glasses, plates, and cookbooks, and numerous wire racks house a variety of dry ingredients. The drawers of an antique library card catalog hold an alphabetized collection of heirloom seeds that Raiford will cultivate into this year’s harvest. 

Raiford and I set up at a stainless-steel prep table and begin peeling shrimp to make a version of his coastal paella. We’re riffing on the concept a bit, omitting the sausage he typically includes because there’s none on hand today and using earthy ground turmeric instead of more delicate saffron; the turmeric creates a beautiful golden color. 

“I like the flavor of turmeric more so than I like the lightness of saffron. Turmeric is more accessible to people anyhow.” He says paella was introduced by the Spanish when they occupied the area but that the concept of one‑pot rice dishes has deep roots in Southern cooking.

The shrimp shells and turmeric join garlic, smoked paprika, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and a lemon half in a large pot that he then fills with water. The stock simmers briefly before he moves the solids to the compost bin, where they’ll eventually develop into a nutrient-rich mixture he’ll use to feed future plantings.

Raiford sautés peppers and onions in a small paella pan for several minutes before stirring long-grain rice into the softened vegetables. He adds the stock, and once the liquid simmers down to the level of the top of the rice, he studs the paella with fresh local clams and the peeled shrimp. He covers the pan and allows the rice to finish cooking to perfect tenderness as the seafood gently steams and the clams open. 

We sit down to glasses of iced tea made with hibiscus from the farm and the stunning paella, which he scatters with lemon wedges. 

Before we dig in he says, “These shrimp were in the ocean two, three days ago. You can’t get it any fresher than this. These clams were in the ocean less than a week ago. Being able to have something at its purest, finest point, at its peak, that’s what this is about.” 

Then, reiterating the point with his arms opened wide, as though to embrace the entirety of Gilliard Farms, he repeats the sentiment with even more feeling, “That’s what all this is about.”