A Chef's Life

[Music playing] There's a lot more to a pig than just pork chops and bacon.

My grandparents could take a pig, manipulate it's parts, and sustain their family for the winter.

I'm hoping to turn folks back on to everything but the squeal.

The Avett Brothers perform "Will You Return" I'm Vivian and I'm a chef.

My husband Ben and I were working for some of the best chefs in New York City when my parents offered to help us open our own restaurant.

Of course, there was a catch.

We had to open this restaurant in Eastern North Carolina, where I grew up and said I would never return.

[Music plays] So this is my life.

Raising twins, living in the house I grew up in, and exploring the south, one ingredient at a time.

Previously on A Chef's Life We had a fire in the kitchen.

Just you know, we're basically having to start over.

[Music playing] [Tools operating] We're doing a trial run tonight with a bunch of our staff.

Ribeye, medium.

Wait.

That's not right.

But the computer system...

I can't...Tomorrow we can not go into service like that.

We're gonna crash and burn.

[Music playing] Today is the big day.

We're gonna open tonight and um I think things are gonna be okay.

I'm so happy we did a run through because it exposed a lot of problems, both with our computer system and some of the dishes I thought would work, definitely did not.

I am extremely excited about last night, tonight, the next coming weeks.

I'm just ready to get back to cooking.

When you check the books on a Friday or Saturday and you got 140 in there and you know that it's going to be full at 5:30 and it's not going to stop until ten or eleven o'clock at night, you get some butterflies in your stomach.

There was a lot of anxiety about just getting the ball rolling yesterday.

I at least feel like tonight won't be worse than last night.

Alright, stuff it Allen!

Uhhh hooo!

This is a fresh sausage that we're making.

This is meant to emulate Eastern North Carolina style barbecue.

So I made a vinegar based barbecue sauce and flavored the pork with it and inside here we have ground pork shoulder and ground bacon.

It looks great!

Another thing I wanna talk about is something we're starting actually today.

I'm call it our whole animal program.

The idea is that we will get a whole animal either a pig, a lamb, or a side of beef.

And I think this will happen once a week.

We're going to start with two small pigs from Warren.

You know, we try to be sustainable and we try to use farmers.

The best thing you can do for a farmer that grows animals is use that whole animal.

Everybody wants the loin or the rack or you know, these prime cuts but what is the farmer to do with the rest of the animal?

So next week we'll get a lamb and start the whole process over with that lamb and then the following week we'll get a side of a cow which is going to be...terrifying.

[Laughter] [Music plays] Haha, that's awesome.

Warren, one of my main produce farmers has started raising pigs, mainly I think as sort of a hobby.

Warren named the sows on his farm after his wife and his farm manager's wife.

I don't really know how that makes their wives feel?

Right.

You might get lucky and get one named after you.

I really don't want one.

The sows had actually a litter of pigs the week of our fire.

I told Warren that I wanted to serve one of the pigs from that litter when we reopened so here we are.

Watch the wire.

I know you know it's there.

I found out a couple of times trying to get myself over it.

[Laughter] Warren got his sows from a neighbor up the street who's been raising pigs on the ground for years and years and years.

They have hog killings every January.

They hang hams in their back yard.

They do these things.

They're the real deal.

So how long have ya'll been raising pigs like this?

All my life.

I'm 51 so...

I made it Ya'll have a big hog killing every year?

Been having it but this year it ain't ever get cold enough.

-So you're going to have some babies in June?

-Yeah, in June.

And how many will be in these litters, do you think?

You don't never know?

Most of the time she'll have 16.

-Oh wow.

-Yeah but they don't raise em all.

And how many litters will they have in their lifetime?

They say 2 and a half per year.

So your boar is really busy to be honest?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Do you have a ham house or a.... Yeah, we got a smokehouse.

Is there anything in it?

-Yeah.

-Can we go look at it?

[Music plays] Okay, so I see there's salt on the floor.

Yeah, that's salt.

You salt em down right here.

So you actually smoke in here?

Yeah, it gets it nice and humid and get it smoking good.

Then you put it in there smoldering out and it will smoke it up.

It's as simple as that.

Yeah.

-Uh huh, that's the real deal.

-Haha -That's the real deal right there.

-It's heavier than it looks.

I imagine you wouldn't want anyone to take one off your hands, would you?

Naw [Laughter] Well if you ever do I know someone who might want one.

Well, thank you so much.

In North Carolina pork is huge.

In parts of eastern North Carolina they're way more pigs than people.

My parents are hog farmers.

Big hog farmers.

They raise the type of pork that you would buy in the grocery store.

They type of pork we serve at Chef and the Farmer is what's known as Heritage breeds.

Breeds like Berkshire, Tamworth, Old Spots.

They have these eccentric qualities that really stand out on a plate.

Music plays Knife sharpening This is one of two sixty pound pigs that we're starting our whole animal program with.

We're gonna use all it's parts and I'm going to break it down.

Warren did ask me to save the testicles for him?

I'm not sure why but he wants em fried up.

So, I'll take those off first.

As a chef you know, you don't really get to butcher whole big animals that often because that's where the most money is.

That's where the biggest investment is so you don't' want to give it to someone who is inexperienced.

This will be my first time actually breaking down a whole pig and I don't wanna waste anything.

I don't wanna come across as inexperienced to my cooks and I wanna make sure that we do this pig justice.

This is a little tiny loin from one of those pigs that I put in a brine and now we're smoking.

We're kinda trying to make a take on Canadian bacon.

I hope it's perfect because it's on the menu and we're going to have to serve it so haha.

That's the best Canadian bacon I've ever had.

[Music plays] We have this place in the area called Nahunta.

They claim to be America's largest pork display.

Now that we're going to be getting whole pigs and trying to use all their parts, I'm very interested to see how Nahunta breaks it all down.

This is actually really helpful because seeing the way they package parts and repurpose them is very smart.

Like this ham here.

Right now I'm sitting at the restaurant with two hams that are bigger than these and they have deboned this and rolled it and tied it and I could use that as a roast and that's maybe like eight servings.

Meat cutting So are you the ham, ham master here?

Ham....well I look after the ham houses.

Everything basically you see here we do ourselves.

We don't buy and resale hardly anything.

We start with the fresh product and we go all the way through.

You want to go to the ham houses now?

Yeah.

So you were raised around here?

Yes.

I've always worked on the farm or... one of the highlights of growing up was whenever we had the hog killing at home.

So you know, so this here is just turning on tradition.

Absolutely.

I think this is awesome.

It smells incredible in here.

We start in what we call the winter time rooms which is the coolers where the hams are brought in fresh and salted down.

Then the salt is rinsed off and we hang them into another cooler which is called equalization and that's sort of like spring time.

That's letting the salt penetrate into the bone to keep from having spoilage.

Used to, a lot of times people thought once you salted a ham down that once you hung it up it would be okay.

They would get warm weather and they'd end up that summer time having spoiled meat.

You still need your cool weather to let the salt penetrate to the bone.

Then it doesn't matter if it gets up to a hundred, a hundred and twenty degrees outside or wherever you are storing the ham, they'll keep.

They'll preserve.

Because the hog killing would be done like in January when it was cool.

December, January.

And so you're creating this in three different stages... That's correct.

-As mother nature would have.

-That's correct.

So cool.

Music plays Today we are at my neighbors, Jimmy Outlaw's and Poodle Hardison's and we're gonna make pork cracklins, something I've always wanted to do.

I grew up hearing my sisters talk about making cracklins on hog killing day.

It's something I missed out on because people just don't do things like this anymore.

Today we're gonna start the long process of rendering out the lard to make the cracklins rise to the top and then we're finally gonna press them so they're crispy and delicious.

Uhh Mr.

Outlaw, so what was in the pot when you started putting the fat in there?

We had water in it.

-Okay.

-Just a little bit of water to get, you know, boiling.

Oh, that's the paddle?

Yeah, it's made to fit.... this thing is a hundred year old.

You just start like that and just a minute you go all the way down to the center of the pot and just bring it up.

If you're in a hurry you might not wanna make lard.

So this would be something that you would do -the day that you had a hog killing?

-Right.

After the hog's been cut up, it's put on the table over there and your women folks cuts the lard, cooks the skins.

Did you have any of your umm, children or grandchildren helping?

My children stayed out of school on hog killing day.

I figured on those days they would get more educating here than they would at the school house.

Oh I would say definitely so.

I think, you wanna stir for a few minutes?

-I can.

-Poodle's been working hard.

You tired?

Umm hmm [Laughter] I always thought that cracklins were just a snack that old people ate but they're actually a product of people's desire and need actually to not waste anything.

Cracklins are first and foremost from rendering lard.

[Music plays] How are the babies?

They're good.

They're good.

When they say this is an all day event they are not kidding.

No it is.

Such as that right there you can't rush.

This is...What time is it Poodle?

Girl don't get my lying...6:15.

About five hours in so far.

Yeah Maybe in a hour we will be pressing cracklins.

[Laughter] So why couldn't we do this with chicken fat?

I was somewhere not long ago and saw small packs of chicken skins Uhh huh.

It is on the market today.

I did not try em.

[Laughter] What do you think our time frame is?

I'm not rushing you I'm just curious.

Well for sure it won't be long as it has been.

[Laughter] We'll be pressing cracklins in a hour?

Oh yes.

[Music playing] I think it's uhh around 9?

I'm guessing.

We're getting close I think.

There's a lot of lard in the pot.

I see little pieces of what will be cracklins.

So what do you think Mr.

Outlaw, are we gonna press cracklins before midnight?

Yes.

I think it's getting pretty close and it looks to be as close as it's ever been before.

I hope it is haha.

[Music playing] [Liquid draining] What it's doing now is squeezing the lard out of the meat that was left.

Get you a pinch of cracklins and get you some sweet potatoes.

It's a good combination.

It's real good.

Well, I mean, surprisingly even though we have watched this bubble away in fat for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours umm it's not greasy which is very wild to me.

And it works really well with the sweet potato.

I can see why they go hand in hand.

Took a right good while but we accomplished a mission.

We did.

Thank you so much.

It's a little nerve-racking today.

We've got to get this computer system going.

I think everybody's ready to be back.

They're just ready for this week to be over.

This week's gonna be stressful.

Very stressful.

It's 3:30 and I'm supposed to do all the new dishes that the staff hasn't tried by four and Warren's not here.

I love his jovial, carefree attitude but it's really not working with me today.

It's working against me.

I think I might would edge that a little bit.

I did have an employee have some chest pains this morning and have to leave early and another employee had to take her to the hospital so I've been short too all day.

As a matter of fact that's where I'm going right now.

t's like the day we're opening... -I know.

-and Ben wants me to have a meeting at four and I can't because I don't have the ingredients and he's yelling at me and he won't yell at you.

Right right.

It shouldn't happen today.

I know.

I apologize.

Ten minutes we're going to start doing the new dishes, okay?

[Music playing] Don't look so nervous.

Tonight's gonna be great.

This is a first course.

A Candian bacon of sorts.

We took the loins.

We're serving that over a new potato and pickled ramp salad.

The course which I'm most excited about is a green garlic sausage.

It's served with baked red peas.

This is like a take on baked beans.

So, I'm gonna let ya'll try these.

I hope everything goes well tonight.

I think it should.

I feel good about it.

I hope ya'll do.

[Music plays] So today we're going to do a little updated Chef and The Farmer version of pork cracklins.

What I have here is pork fat with the skin attached.

We freezed this fat and then slice it really super thin on our meat slicer.

What I'm going to do is cook them in a little bit of lard so that they become crispy little bits of pig skin.

For the restaurant I've been working on a side of sweet potatoes with a spiced pork cracklin and a maple vinegar sauce.

So I have some butter melting.

I'm gonna sweat some shallots which means I'm just gonna bring them up, heat them up some and they're gonna start giving off liquid much like we would do if we were sweating.

I'm gonna add some maple syrup and some apple cider vinegar.

Kind of a sweet and sour aspects of this sauce.

We're gonna reduce it to kind of a syrupy consistency.

The next thing we're gonna do is make this sweet potato citrus puree.

So what I have are just some simple roasted sweet potatoes and we're going to put them in the food processor.

We're gonna add some citrus zest to this.

A little juice.

Some melted brown sugar and butter.

That looks like dessert.

I'm gonna get this going.

As it's processing I'm going to add a little salt.

My maple vinegar sauce is reducing to a nice syrupy consistency.

To finish it I'm going to add a little black pepper and some nutmeg.

My cracklins have rendered out their fat and the little piece of skin is very crispy.

I'm going to season them.

This is a mixture of salt, cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, and cayenne.

It almost looks like a little barbecue potato chip.

To put this whole thing together we're going to put a little bit of our citrus sweet potato puree on the plate and we're gonna top that with our maple vinegar sauce.

This is gonna taste kind of like barbecue because it has that... that apple cider vinegar, sweet mapley quality and of course the porkiness from our spiced pork rinds.

That's a sweet potato cracklin combination I think that no one at a hog killing has ever seen.

[Music plays] It's finally here.

You know, we've done this once before six years ago when we first opened Chef and The Farmer.

I never thought we'd reopen Chef and The Farmer but it has come.

Tell me a little about what customers, returning customers can expect from tonight?

You know this restaurant from day one has always been about change and we focus on seasonal food and seasonal cuisine and seasons change.

The folks who really enjoy dining here the most are the ones that really understand that and I think have come to enjoy that aspect of the restaurant.

I guess looking forward to the future, what are you guys, what's your thoughts?

-Let's make it through tonight.

-Yeah.

[Laughter] [Music plays] [Chef Vivian talking in kitchen] [Baby moaning] My foray into stay at home mommy mode is over.

My foray into getting the restaurant open again is over.

Hey Dad.

Hey big guy.

Luckily it will be a lot of our biggest fans.

People who really just wanna see us succeed.

So, it's a good feeling knowing these are gonna be the people coming in the door tonight.

The salad was great.

It was a good twist on the wedge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

-I've been working... -The birthday portion was a little light but I've been in training... -You used to order double bacon and you still had to do that?

-I didn't do that tonight.

I was trying to behave.

Ordering one soup followed by two sausages and a ribeye medium rare.

So we have the new computer system and last night they were ringing courses all mixed up but this is legible.

It's not perfect.

I can deal with it.

Okay, it's table 14.

I need you to take it.

I asked her to take it a while ago.

Table 14.

Mullet.

Two.

If you want to discuss stuff about service why don't we make a list and we'll talk about it later.

I just, I can't do it right now.

I wasn't talking about...Jesus Christ.

What?

I'm sorry.

I got all these people things, like about tomorrow but I'm trying to focus on tonight.

-I didn't say a word about tomorrow.

-Okay.

Okay.

[Music plays] Thank god that's over.

It went a hell of a lot better than I thought it was going to based on last night's experience.

People seemed to really get into the whole hog menu.

We actually sold out of the sausage dish which really surprised me because we've never been able to really move a sausage in this place.

Hey Viv...

I gotta talk to you for a second.

He doesn't think we should use it.

All the money's screwed up tonight from those multi-check tables.

Now, apparently the system is not allowing the servers to split checks and put different, you know, sums of money on different checks.

And the guy who sold us the system is saying he wants to refund our money.

I don't know but that doesn't sound so good.

[Music plays] Even by our standards before we had the fire, 100 people is a good night.

Very excited.

I'm really glad to be open.

Vivian's stressed.

Honestly I'm so relieved that it's drawing to an end.

Hopefully I'll be able to sleep well tonight.

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