BRIAN CHILSON
DINNER WITH A SIDE OF HISTORY: The Scott Plantation Settlement will play host to the Arkansas Times Farm to Table dinner.
Wine, swine, history in Scott BRIAN CHILSON
Chef Brian Kearns to take food from Farm to Table. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK
Y
ears ago, it might not have been so special to feast on pork that had but hours before been a happy critter rolling in the muddy pen out back of your plantation. Today, not so much; that pork you eat and the vegetables that go with it are most likely from a grocery store, and your plantation has been turned into a subdivision. The Arkansas Times is going to recreate a little of those past foodways and the country air ambiance with its Farm to Table Dinner Party at the Scott Plantation Settlement on Saturday, June 29. L’ecole Culinaire-trained Country Club
of Little Rock Chef Brian Kearns — winner of the Times’ Heritage Hog Roast — will serve an all-Arkansas-sourced meal on the grounds amid historic buildings that have been restored to give a flavor of early Scott. “This is such an exciting time of the year” for food-lovers, Kearns said, exulting in melons and stone fruits and tomatoes and delicious vegetables coming into season. The menu won’t be all Arkansas — the wines will come from California, which is a good place to deviate from the locavore principle. Bonnie Montgomery will provide some down-
KEARNS
home music, as well. Diners will be greeted at 5:30 p.m. with a Piper Sonoma Brut champagne and “butlered” hors d’oeuvres to ward off hunger and thirst they’ll work up by checking out such things as the first Bearskin Plantation home and the corn crib from the Dortch Plantation and the one-room schoolhouse from the Cottonwoods Plantation and so forth. At 6:30 p.m., dinner will be served family-style at a long table under a tent. First course:
Carbon, goldies and annis noir tomatoes (grown by Times publisher and farmer Alan Leveritt) and feta made by Kent Walker tossed with watermelon, red onion and arugula from Scott Heritage Farm, which is right down the road from the Settlement. For this first course, the wine will be Buoncristiani’s Triad Blanc (Napa, 2012), a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier and Chardonnay. Next up: That most cherished of summertime dishes, ratatouille, prepared by Kearns with local eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes and onions. Blackbird’s Arriviste rose (Napa, 2011) will be paired with the second course. Scott Heritage has provided three Old Spot hogs for the main course, which Kearns will begin cooking late Friday night on site. Kearns won the Times’ Heritage Roast by letting the hog be a hog. “I didn’t try to mask the taste of the pig itself,” he said, but accentuated its flavor with a barbecue rub of chili powder, cumin, sugar and salt. The pork will be served with an heirloom tomato jam and a corn, pea, onion and tomato succotash. A bold pinot noir from Renteria’s Knittel Creek Vinyard (Carneras, 2009) will accompany it. Finally, peaches from Barnhill Orchards in Lonoke will be served on a crostata (a “free-form tart,” Kearns described it) with salted caramel ice cream. “I’ve already started buying ice cream from Loblolly,” the small-batch creamery in Little Rock. The final wine: Reynolds Family Up To You white blend (Napa, 2009) When the sun goes down, the mosquitos will come out for their own allArkansas meal, so dinner will be over by 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $110 and may be purchased up until June 28 at http://atfarmtotable.eventbrite.com or by calling Kelly Lyles at the Arkansas Times at 375-2985.
FROM CHILDREN’S THEATER TO $400 MILLION MOVIE, CONT. want to get the best movie possible that’s also the most responsible movie possible, meaning making the movie that will speak to an audience and making it for a responsible amount of money. You want to be able to do a next one and you want movies to do well.” Simpson and his wife, Jocelyn Hayes, who’s a successful producer in her own right and was part of the film festival panel, met at Killer Films. Before they married and started having kids, their careers were well established. Hayes has produced “The Company,” “Infamous,” “Lola Versus” and 30
JUNE 20, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
the new indie thriller “The East.” But scheduling has occasionally been a challenge. Navigating weather, massive amounts of money and actor availability pretty much mean that they have no control over their own schedules. Five weeks after Hayes gave birth to their second child, Simpson left to work on “World War Z.” Soon after, Hayes, two kids in tow, went to New York to produce “Lola Versus.” She kept the baby on set with her. Simpson flew in on weekends. After that, they were in Vancouver as a family during production of a “Wimpy Kid” film and then in
Shreveport for “The East.” Simpson and Hayes said that when they’re on location, they always like to pretend like they’re living in whatever city they’re shooting in. Rather than staying in a hotel, they rent a house and try to become locals. They said they guessed they’d live in Hillcrest if they were making a movie in Little Rock. Good restaurants and general quality of life matter more than people realize in terms of determining a location for a production, Hayes said. With Arkansas’s diversity of geography, they think Little Rock is primed to become
a base for big productions. Plus, a lot of the Southern and Midwestern cities Little Rock might compete with are “shot out,” said Hayes. “That means so many people have shot there that the locations become too familiar and the residents get really tired of production in their neighborhoods and stop saying yes.” Establishing Little Rock as a film hub is “all about making sure you’re on Hollywood’s radar and that the incentive is real and it’ll stay in place,” Simpson said. “Then if a couple of films have a good experience, it’ll snowball.”