A Chef's Life - My favorite new TV program


My favorite new TV program this season is a PBS series about a young couple who are running a restaurant in North Carolina.  Chef Vivian Howard and husband Ben Knight left NYC to operate their own place and this program explores all the work involved with running a restaurant.  Which is a whole lot of work.

I missed the first episode but they’d had a kitchen fire before the second episode which gutted the restaurant.  That show was centered around getting the restaurant up and running.  Again, an amazing amount of work.  In the meantime they’re raising twin babies and are building a new house.  I’m amazed at how well they are coping with these huge changes in their lives.  I’m pretty sure I’d be screaming or sobbing and not much in between…  There was new kitchen equipment and an involved new computer program for the staff to master.  Ai yai yai!

Vivian is showcasing North Carolina meats and produce; one show featured three styles of grits.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten grits (ground corn) in even one style but I now know how to cook them, (in a double boiler with a long handled whisk so eruptions of spattering and gurgling corn don’t scar one’s body for life.)  There is a recipe for Grits with mushroom, sausage, and pepper ragout on the web site (http://www.pbs.org/food/shows/a-chefs-life/)   

There was a segment on making cracklin’ – the bits and pieces remaining after rendering hog lard.  I confess to always wanting the try the crispy pig tail just like Laura Ingalls Wilder in “Little House on the Prairie” – I was a foodie even back in childhood days!  But I digress – I got an especial kick from this episode with Vivian interviewing the hog farmer – this guy had such a deep southern accent that PBS ran English subtitles!  It still makes me laugh.  Vivian bought a whole pig and was going to make use of the entire animal – which was very interesting.  To me, anyway. 

Episode 5 was on tomatoes, 6 centered on oysters, raw and steamed.  Episode 7 aired yesterday but my satellite quit working, so I’m gonna see if I can watch it on line. 

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