Credit: Sirena Singleton of Aneris Photography
When asked if she listens to music while cooking, Chef Rashaunda Grant laughed. It’s not music that keeps things bubbling in her kitchen.
“I listen to audiobooks, mostly romances,” she said.
Although silence is also useful in the kitchen—where the sounds of sizzling pans and burbling pots are important, along with sampling and smelling foods as they cook—Rashaunda still prefers a good story to set the mood.
In her heart, Chef Rashaunda Grant is an educator. She sees teaching cooking as a way people of any age can learn to prepare delicious, nutritious foods while also learning about the cultures from which they derive.
Chef Rashaunda’s kitchen studio, The Carolina Cookery at 505 Folly Road on James Island, is where she offers hands-on cooking lessons and shares some of her most beloved recipes and memories. With a family whose history goes back more than five generations on James Island, her specialty of Southern Gullah-Geechee cuisine may come as no surprise. What guests may find interesting is how Rashaunda also embraces the influence of numerous other cultures.
Rashaunda spent years attending Florida A&M University, an HBCU in Tallahassee, Florida, and drew inspiration from the many cultures and cuisines of her fellow students from across the African diaspora. Today, it's not uncommon to see the occasional culinary nod to the Caribbean, Latin America or even West Africa in the dishes she teaches and prepares.
Although Rashaunda spent most of her professional life working in various government and nonprofit roles, she says she’s always known her true love is cooking. Going way back to her childhood, she said her earliest influence was an aunt who taught her how to make the ever-popular Charleston chewies. Many years later, focused on a second career, she knew it had to be in the food industry.
Though unsure at the time, Rashaunda says it was by chance that she attended an open audition for Season 10 of the reality cooking show MasterChef in the fall of 2018. After making it through to the semifinalist round of auditions, she returned from Los Angeles and thought, “If I made it that far without really knowing anything, how far could I go with a little bit of training?”
Grant enrolled at the Culinary Institute of Charleston in 2019 and has been cooking professionally ever since.
When asked who was her greatest influence in the world of cooking, Rashaunda cites two individuals. The first is author, chef and culinary instructor Kevin Mitchell, whom she had the opportunity to study under during her time at the Culinary Institute of Charleston. Grant said Chef Mitchell’s scholarly and near-anthropological approach to cuisine and culture helped her appreciate the nuanced and rich history of Southern cuisine. She also credits Mitchell for introducing her to the works of her second greatest inspiration, the famed Southern writer, chef and teacher Edna Lewis (1916–2006).
Grant said Lewis’ experience of growing up in the South “was not exactly the same as mine, but still felt so similar.” Rashaunda explained that Lewis' writing resonated with her own experiences and impressions she gained from traveling widely in the region with her father and grandfather, both preachers who traveled as part of their work.
Credit: Sirena Singleton of Aneris Photography
In fact, it is that time spent at churches and in the rural communities throughout Jasper, Hampton and Georgetown counties that Rashaunda attributes her passion for working with local farmers to. She values these developing relationships, which offer her variety among familiar vegetables, grains and fruits, and also bring some surprise discoveries.
“I recently came to know a hardy little grain called freekeh from a local grower, Marsh Hen Mill, for example, and I’m really having fun exploring new avenues of preparation and creating dishes with it,” she said.
Recently, Rashaunda participated in Lowcountry Local First’s 17th Annual Chef’s Potluck, an event that brings farmers and chefs together for an exuberant community tasting. What did Rashaunda prepare? Her description is as mouthwatering as it is pleasing to the eye: Haitian-inspired pork griot, with pork sourced from Peculiar Pig Farm, and salade russe, a vibrant beet and potato salad featuring fresh produce from Joseph Fields Farm and a tangy dressing made with Greek yogurt from Lowcountry Creamery.
Rashaunda said she is committed to highlighting the hard work of local farmers and strives to include locally sourced items in all her cooking classes.
Rashaunda enjoys working with clients to design menus for special events. In addition, many students of all ages have come to her home-like cooking studio. Among those she has found particularly engaging are educators who want to learn and share with their students the specifics of how and why foods fit into Southern culture.