A Chef's Life

- Season 2

(2014)

Having spent most of her adult life in the kitchens of highly-lauded restaurants, Vivian has rarely celebrated the holidays during busy Decembers. This year, she and her husband Ben Knight are determined to give their toddler twins a traditional holiday experience, cooking, laughing, and yes, crying their way through Southern traditions new and old. In this holiday special, Vivian discovers that mistletoe is traditionally shot out of a pecan tree, experiences her first hog killing, and leads a "tacky Christmas sweater" night with the restaurant staff at Chef and the ...

After a year recovering from a restaurant fire and re-opening Chef and the Farmer, Vivian and Ben go all-in to open a burger/oyster bar called The Boiler Room. Vivian boils over with the stress of staffing adjustments, testing new menu concepts, and the enormous task of putting 500 pounds of blueberries to good use.

Vivian and Ben head to the beach for their annual summer vacation with the Howard family. Vivian turns up the heat with a bit of friendly competition with her older sisters. Frogmore Stew, cooked outside at the beach of course. She visits a fish camp and learns the heads and tails of fresh shrimp. Back in Kinston, the devil is in the details as Vivian and Ben prepare to open a second restaurant.

Burgers. Oysters. Beer. Hallelujah! Vivian and Ben are on the cusp of opening their new restaurant, the Boiler Room, and they are facing a new challenge: how to make a veggie burger stand out. Vivian waxes romantic about the beloved butter bean and chooses it as the star of her new burger, but quickly learns that the butter bean is a straight up diva when it comes to growing conditions.

Vivian, Ben and the entire Chef and the Farmer staff hustle to complete the mammoth preparations necessary for her big luncheon at the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium in Oxford, Mississippi. Vivian take the women in her life as inspiration for her menu, honoring those who have made her the woman she has become.

Excitement turns into heightened emotion and real nerves for Vivian as she faces one challenge after another in the prep kitchen before her big SFA luncheon. Vivian is glad to have Chef Jason Vincent to lend some street cred. Rice almost brings Vivian to her breaking point but everyone pulls together for the big event and her parents join her on stage for an emotional and watershed moment for her.

As Vivian returns from her Mississippi road trip to the fall harvest, she confronts her long absence from the dinner service at Chef and the Farmer. She travels to an heirloom apple tree collector, Creighton Leigh, the Johnny Appleseed of the Southern apple, who grows 800 varieties in the rolling hills of North Carolina's Piedmont. Savory and sweet heirloom apples are in grits with cheddar and ham and triple-decker apple pie with a crust made from fresh-rendered lard makes an appearance on the menu. Vivian tries her hand at drying apples and her neighbor schools her ...

Vivian presents a few of the many ways fish makes its appearance in Southern cooking, from dried mullet roe to a friendly fish stew competition with Warren Brothers' buddies. Vivian gets schooled on the rules of a good Eastern NC fish stew: Make it a social event. Use whole hog bacon. Resist your urge to stir! And most importantly, start crackin' eggs and don't forget a side of white bread.

It's November ya'll and that means it's busy at Chef and the Farmer. Vivian is feeling the stress of both work and home as she juggles running the restaurant after suspending her sous chef and preparing for her own Thanksgiving feast. She and Ms. Scarlett head to Ms. Scarlett's family farm where they source their pecans and have a run in with Uncle Dwight's wild boar.

The heady heyday of hot Summer vegetables are over and rainy winters can bring some dull varieties. Few are more unglamorous than the turnip. Nevertheless, Vivian is determined to showcase the sexiness of this seemingly vanilla root vegetable. Unlike the bitter, earthy purple-top variety, Warren and Lilly show Vivian how to cook the tender, silky Hakurei turnip.

Late winter brings "run-up" turnip greens, which Vivian sees as central to her approach to southern food, capturing both the spirit and the letter of what Chef and the Farmer is all about. Miss Scarlett helps out by procuring greens from a local produce stand, washing them four times, and discussing the how-to of buying and cooking good turnips to satisfy her "southern people."

As Vivian waits for Spring's vegetables to appear, she pauses to appreciate chicken's endless capacity as an ingredient. The restaurant's new best-seller is a whole chicken, pounded and stuffed with broccoli salad, a method that takes a free-range bird much further than it can ordinarily go. Meanwhile, her effort to deconstruct chicken salad, a Southern favorite, turns out better in theory.

Vivian hunts for ramps-an Appalachian wild leek-with renowned bacon purveyor Alan Benton near his home in the Tennessee countryside. The restaurant world goes wild over ramps, after a winter of few fresh vegetables. Vivian's "ramp dealer" brings her his freshest stash, foraged from the North Carolina mountains. Theo and Flo show off a piglet and a baby goat at the ag show.

Vivian finally makes good on a promise to cook for a friend's supper club, and she seizes the moment to experiment with an egg dish that she hopes to wow New York City's James Beard House crowd in a few weeks. She visits with her egg producer and learns the ins and outs of egg varieties, from chickens to ducks to guineas to partridges.

Ben and the kitchen team pack up the van and hit the road for New York. A month of planning and preparation peak as Vivian's invitation to cook at the prestigious James Beard House becomes a reality. Back in New York, she reflects on the beginning of her journey as a professional chef. Warren Brothers, his wife Jane, and other friends for Kinston bring their particular brand of Eastern NC charm.