But it’s the subject of valuation that gets him the most worked
up. “You can put lime juice and hot sauce on something crunchy
and say ‘that’s good,’” he explains, “but that’s not enough.”
Learning how to value food properly requires a certain amount
of discrimination. You have to notice the difference between a red
radish from the supermarket and a Spanish black radish straight
from the farm; you have to feel the difference between a
conventional yellow onion dusty in its supermarket bin and a fresh
Vidalia onion so sweet, says Hopkins, “My daughter eats them
like apples, straight from the ground.”
With those two farm-fresh ingredients—the radishes and the
onions—Hopkins illustrates the way that he values good food,
pickling them to preserve them. “In the South,” he says, “it’s all
about pickles.”
Hopkins approaches pickling with a casual enthusiasm that’s
infectious. “You just sort of wing it,” he says.
On his shelves, he has kumquats pickled with garlic and chilies,
and pickled fennel stalks (“They make great straws for bloody
Marys”). Later, he’ll use his pickled garlic and pickled banana
peppers to prepare a vibrant dish of greens. He’ll also make a
seared trout with a watercress puree that doesn’t have pickles in
it, but that gets a hit of acid from an orange and a lemon.
It’s valuation, though, that underscores everything that
happens in Hopkins’s kitchen. At one point he opens the lid of
his garbage can and asks, “What have I thrown away?” He peers
inside. “The stems from those leeks.” He pauses and reflects, “I