A Casserole Says Plenty

(Intro Music plays) More than just something to eat.

More than just a dish on the table.

Casseroles serve a purpose.

They illicit a response.

They are not an ingredient.

Casseroles are a genre.

(Theme Music plays- The Avett Brothers "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.

(Theme Music plays) (Theme 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.

I am trying to write and deliver a cookbook by January.

The chef at the Boiler Room quit so Ben's working in the kitchen there.

So, I agreed to do this art show in Durham.

About four weeks ago we finalized the date.

It's so interesting to me how my family has reacted to this celebrity thing.

Woo!

(Laughter) Okay, everybody look at me.

Cheeese!

(Laughter) (Music plays) I got a big weekend ahead of me.

On Sunday, my Mom's church is having their homecoming.

And today, Sheri Castle, a cookbook author and a southern food storyteller of the highest degree is coming to Kinston to do a book signing.

How do you feel about me putting a casserole right here?

I love it.

Okay.

When you do a book signing, generally you have a recipe out there so people can taste it.

So, I offered to make the chicken casserole from her book.

This is poppy seed chicken casserole.

You know, there were hundreds of casseroles to choose among.

I wanted one that would be fully casserole.

So, it's creamy, it's got crunch on top, and you can identify the parts, which to me is what every casserole should have.

People don't like casseroles when they don't know what's in it.

When you say fully casserole, what is fully casserole?

It's all in one dish.

So, you've got vegetable, you've got creaminess, you've got the chicken, but to me the thing about casserole is it needs to have a crunchy topping and this is cracker crumbs.

It is so very classically southern to use crushed crackers as a component in something.

Yeah.

Why do you think that is?

I think that crackers were one of the first commodities that people, no matter how modest their circumstances, you could get crackers and it was one less thing you had to make from scratch.

I feel you.

Yep.

Yep.

And I think that's where the casseroles that have, let's talk about the can of soup.

It's not that soup is a bad idea.

Soup is a good idea if it makes you not have to make homemade bechamel or make veloute or make something like that.

If you have 13 kids and you're cooking 3 times a day from scratch, everything you can buy rather than do is a mighty good idea under those circumstances.

But, there is something to be said for these casseroles from our past when we have a taste expectation.

You doll them up too much you've missed that target.

You've met another target, but you have not hit your target of taste expectation.

You're right.

You're right.

The Ritz on here but you can't really replicate that exactly... With anything else.

With anything else.

Also, the goal of a casserole is not to be restaurant dish.

The goal of a casserole is to feed the hungry and the heartbroken.

And I think that's your best target.

If you're hungry a casserole hits the spot.

If your heart is broken, if you're in bereavement or whatever, something predictable and warm and creamy, it's every definition of comfort food.

Wo And maybe use up all your leftovers too.

Well yes, except if you don't put something good in the dish you're not going to get anything good out of the dish.

You can't just put a whatever in there because nothing magic is gonna happen when you're not lookin'.

When it's in the oven, it isn't gonna get better if it didn't go in that way.

So you know start out with really good ingredients but they can be simple and there you have casserole.

One other thing I say is, when you don't know what to say a casserole says plenty.

(Laughter) Sheri, you're the bomb.

Bless your heart!

(Laughter) Sheri is a new friend of mine.

She's someone that when I met her we could not stop talking.

We both see southern food and food in general from the same spectacles.

So, we were talking earlier about the book.

How are you feeling about the book these days?

I don't know how to feel.

I feel nervous.

I feel like I'm gonna fail and everybody is gonna see it.

The book is the one thing that doesn't have a daily demand.

Right!

It's the easiest thing to put off 'til the next day.

There's not covers to turn.

There's not babies to tuck in.

You'll say I'll work on this book tomorrow and you can say that for 6 months.

And I am the only one who is being held accountable for it.

Yeah.

Until the comes and the publisher starts calling it's like I'm the only one who is pushing that.

Mmm hmm.

It's very consuming...yeah.

It's a privilege but people don't know it's really hard.

It's hard to get your dream to come true.

Yeah.

I used to say this was my dream.

Now I don't know if I ever want to do it again.

Mmm hmmm.

(Laughter) I started out trying to meet this crazy January deadline for my book and everybody told me, my editor, my agent, everybody told me that is not possible Vivian, you're not going to be able to do that.

But I said yes I will and I was wrong.

So now, I have basically almost a whole nother year to finish my book and I feel a major sense of relief, but I can't let that get the best of me because I have to continue working on this book because my deadline will come.

I went to my mailbox this afternoon and guess what I found.

(Laughter) That's a really good picture of you.

Your hair is so big.

I know.

It looks great doesn't it?

It does look good.

My sister did it.

I like your hair like that.

She like, teased it all up here to give it some volume.

It doesn't look like seaweed.

Seaweed?

Did Alicia tell you that?

No.

Someone said my hair looked like seaweed?

Yeah.

Yeah.

(Laughter) Online or?

- It was an email.

- It was an email.

Haters are gonna hate, girl.

That's fine, yeah.

(Laughter) (Music plays) Right now I'm working on an Italian sausage casserole.

Butternut squash, Italian sausage, and broccoli rabe are a classical Italian flavor combination and so we're doing a little riff on that combination with turnip greens.

These ingredients are gonna be kind of swimming and baked into a fontina bearnaise sauce with a crunchy topping, which is basically a casserole.

These are my butternut squash.

I'm roasting them with just a little bit of olive oil and sorghum syrup, some salt, and I've scored the flesh to encourage caramelization.

So, I'm gonna roast these until they're just tender.

These are my turnip greens that I've blanched and just shocked.

I'm gonna fold them into this mix.

They'll be a really nice color and they'll give it that great bitter taste that pairs so nicely with this Italian sausage and the sweet butternut squash.

Tonight, I'm gonna put on this casserole in the shared plate section.

We'll have kind of a placeholder for a seasonal casserole on the menu.

I'm also working on stuff for Bethel Baptist's homecoming tomorrow and I'd love for somebody to help.

I can do the sweet potato biscuits.

Oh you will?

Yeah, I'll work on those.

Yay!

Did you work at the Boiler Room last night?

Uh huh.

How was it?

Busy.

I am so glad we finally hired somebody.

Yes, me too.

It's like the best thing that's happened all year.

We have finally hired a chef at the Boiler Room.

Yes!

Finally!

After about four months of Ben running the kitchen over there I think we've found the right guy to do the job.

(Music plays) And Ben can finally do what it is that he has longed wanted to do, spend some time painting.

Want to go back out?

Go ahead.

(Music plays) So, I wouldn't be able to do this if we weren't lucky to find this new chef over there, Eric.

He's young.

He's 26 but he's very serious about what he's doing.

It's really just allowed me to be able to do this the last three weeks.

It's pretty, pretty exhausting in September and uhh I was feeling pretty defeated.

I do think one thing that has been very important is watching Vivian's development as a chef has been very inspirational and educational because she has immersed herself in her craft and studied it and spent all her waking moments doing it.

And she's really become excellent at it and I think that's been a great lesson for me to see how another creative person approaches doing something every day that takes a lot of energy and a lot of thought.

I really like those three.

Especially the red one and kind of the one on the end.

That one I call "Just a Little Ugly."

So, I've got... today's Saturday, a little less than two weeks.

I got a lot of work done.

I got about 25 paintings finished so I'm right at my goal.

I'm just, I'm nervous.

See it's not that bad.

It's kind of mean.

It is a little mean.

I didn't know my hair looked like seaweed.

O.S.- It doesn't.

You have beautiful hair.

I mean, who says that?

Seaweed hair is unattractive at anytime.

And then she goes on.

Oh my god!

What?

You got waffles in here.

You said it's family meal.

Clear out the family meal shelf, right?

There's a lot of fontina.

There's Italian sausage.

Some farro, collards, some broccoli, and some sweet potato waffle to just hold it all together.

I would have tossed the sweet potato waffle in some butter and put it on top for the crispy component.

I'm not done.

The crispy component is going to be bread crumbs, bacon and parm.

Okay.

Because who doesn't like that?

Right.

(Music plays) Family meal often ends up being kind of a catchall for the little leftovers that are floating around the restaurant.

The casserole I'm working on in the back is a different animal though.

I've got very particular elements that I'm trying to put in the dish and it is not haphazard.

The sauce that is going to bind my butternut squash and sausage casserole is going to be a take on a bearnaise sauce.

A bearnaise sauce is built off of a bechamel sauce.

A bechamel sauce is equal parts butter and flour to make a blond roux.

The flour and the butter will just melt.

The raw flavor of the flour will cook out, but the roux will not take on any color hence the term blond.

At this point the butter and the flour have cooked together and I have what I would call a blond roux.

I'm gonna add milk making this a bechamel.

For people like me who grew up here it's like bechamel?

Veloute?

Don't you mean gravy?

Umm, these are really the proper terms to describe basic sauces.

You see I've got this super thick paste.

I'm gonna add milk and let it come up to a boil.

What I have right now is a very basic bechamel.

There's no salt, no pepper, there's no nutmeg.

I'm just gonna add cheese and whisk it in to melt and that will make this a bearnaise sauce essentially and for this bearnaise sauce I'm adding fontina and pecorino romano and that will give me a really nice full flavored cheese sauce.

To finish it off I'm going to add a little freshly grated nutmeg.

It adds a kind of undetectable dimension to the sauce.

So, so far in here I'm building my casserole and I have my butternut squash and Italian sausage.

Now, I'm getting ready to put in my turnip greens and then I'll stir in my cheese sauce, my bearnaise and we'll see what we got.

(Music plays) So, what are you taking to homecoming?

The string bean casserole.

Okay.

Deviled eggs.

Sweet potato biscuits with country ham.

Sweet corn.

Are you feeding everybody?

(Laughter) No, I just want all these things represented on the table and I'm afraid that other people won't make it.

When I think of church homecomings in my childhood I always think about the casseroles that dotted the long table full of food and Ms. Daisy's casserole in particular was kind of always like my calling card.

Come in.

Hey Ms. Daisy.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Well I'm excited.

We're gonna make some casserole.

That's tremendous!

I mean I knew shape and size of her casserole dish so that I could spot it down the long line of food.

I mean, I love this thing.

Alright, what do we need to start with?

You want me to dice the onion?

The pepper and the onion.

Okay.

And I use about a tablespoon of olive oil.

Have you always used olive oil in this?

No, ma'am.

(Laughter) Because I know back in the day we didn't know what olive oil was.

I switched it from butter.

Alright, onion.

Okay.

So, I just saute this down.

I need to slice these potatoes.

You know I used to just love the dessert table at all of our covered dish events whether it's a family reunion or whatever.

And then a few years ago I went to my Dad's side's family reunion.

Yes.

And all the desserts were like, from Wal-Mart.

I feel like homecoming and family reunions used to be an opportunity to kind of show off your skills.

That's really becoming a lost thing.

I agree.

I need to get my hamburger.

So, I'm just going to brown the ground chuck.

Okay, I'm going to drain the grease out.

This cabbage will go in the bottom here?

Yes, the cabbage will go into the bottom.

I do, it's probably three cups of cabbage.

Then, I just take the potatoes and layer them around.

Most casseroles have kind of cream of something soup in it but this one doesn't, does it?

Yes ma'am.

Oh.

Okay!

(Laughter) I use a can of cheddar cheese and cream of mushroom.

Okay, this is going to go in here?

Mmm hmm.

Celery and onions will go in.

(Music plays) Look at that color on that cheese.

So, I just get this mixed together now.

I just do it like this to get it in the pan.

So, now I see why this appealed to me because what's going to happen is this is going to kind of melt down and what you're going to see on top is a lot of the beef and then a little bit of the potato.

The cabbage is hidden on the bottom.

Yes!

Is that what drew you to it because you didn't see the cabbage?

I guess so.

(Laughter) Okay, we're going to bake it at 350 for 50 minutes covered and then uncover it for ten more minutes.

Ten more minutes.

And let it brown.

Yes.

That looks great.

Mmmm.

That looks great.

I think that's the best one you ever made.

Thank you.

It's so good and I love just like the creamy potato and the beef and I don't think the olive oil makes any difference.

(Laughter) Good.

Good.

It's delicious Ms. Daisy.

Thank you so much.

It's so good to see you.

Thank you.

I have a really... special place for you... for all y'all.

Thank you.

I love you too.

You're all special to us.

I'm gonna have just a little bit more.

(Laughter) So, it's Italian sausage, collard greens, and sweet potato waffle bread pudding.

(Laughter) Alright.

Sounds fantastic.

Pretty dern good.

Pretty dern good.

(Music plays) So, you know when you think about casseroles, for me they were a big part of growing up.

You know, they always had some kind of binding sauce component.

You know cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom, cream of whatever.

Those actually have a basis in real cooking.

So, a cream of chicken soup or cream of mushroom soup is a sauce called a veloute.

You think of a baked macaroni and cheese, which is also in my mind, a casserole, it's baked with a cheese sauce and that's a mornay sauce and that's what we have here and I hope to God this is as good as the kitchen sink casserole that y'all had for family meal.

Do you have waffles in there?

(Laughter) It's not gonna be as good if you don't have waffles.

(Music plays) (Laughter) That looks ridiculous.

What we're featuring tonight is butternut squash, Italian sausage casserole.

Keep that one in mind.

(Music plays) You know, I don't have the same emotional attachment to every dish I put on the menu but this little casserole, I just really want it to work.

It's simple but it's different.

I just want people to like it.

Very good.

Thank you, Robert.

It's hot.

It's very good.

Okay so, sweet potato biscuits and the corn I'm going to do in the morning.

You sure you want to bake these in the morning?

Sounds like you got a lot to do tomorrow.

I'm just going to put those in the oven.

I mean, my Mom is going to be there.

She's like so critical.

I grew up going to Bethel Baptist Church every Sunday.

The two days I actually looked forward going to church were the Sundays that there was a meal attached to the service.

So, that happened twice a year.

Pastor appreciation day and homecoming that we're going to today.

So the only thing I really have left to do is put together the string bean and mushroom casserole.

So I have some butter melting here and some leeks sweating in it.

Once the leeks become translucent I'm going to add a mushroom parmesan stock and a country ham stock that I used to cook my green beans.

So, basically what I'm making here is a veloute or a cream of mushroom and ham soup.

So, we're gonna use these really beautiful shiitake mushrooms that are log grown.

So, I've got my leeks.

They're fully sweated in my butter so I'm going to add equal parts flour and make this blond roux that I keep talking about.

So, basically I'm just looking for bubbles to cover the entire surface of the pan.

I'm going to add my mushroom broth and my pot liquor and you can kind of watch things thicken up very quickly.

And I like to add just a small amount of liquid and see how thick it becomes, then add more as I need it.

One of the miscommunications of name of cream of mushroom soup is that there is no cream in here.

It is only creamy because of the emulsification of the flour and butter and the way it latches on to the stock.

So, now that it's casserole assembly time I'm gonna put my green beans in here that I cooked yesterday.

Then, I'm gonna pour my cream of mushroom on top of here.

This is good ol' regular American cheese though.

I'm not going that far out of the box.

Alright, I'm going in.

Now, for some french fried onions because every casserole has to have a crispy element.

Then I'm gonna soak them in some buttermilk for just a few seconds so that my flour will stick really nicely to them.

You know if you didn't grow up going to a Southern Baptist church you may not know what homecoming is.

Homecoming is actually the church's birthday and all the old members who maybe don't go to that church anymore will come back and celebrate and bring a covered dish.

Again, it's when you eat after church.

O.S.- Father, I pray today as we fellowship with one another and I pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

(Music plays) How are you, Ms. Audrey.

I'm fine shug.

What did you fix?

I made stewed tomatoes, fresh corn, a green bean casserole... Oh wow!

Sweet potato and ham biscuits.

You done good.

And wait... and deviled eggs.

Wow.

I'm impressed.

But I left my whole kitchen, it looks like a bomb went off in it.

(Laughter) (Music plays) Oh look, this is Ms. Daisy's cabbage potato casserole.

Theo, you want to try some hamburger casserole?

You like it?

Yeah.

Hey, can y'all say hello to Ms. Daisy?

Hey Ms. Daisy.

Hey Flo, how you doing?

Your casserole was delicious.

I haven't been to a Bethel Baptist homecoming in about ten years and I'm very proud of the women from Bethel Baptist.

They really represented today.

This was an awesome spread.

Something like we would have seen 20 years ago.

Cakes and pies and puddings and biscuits and chicken and pastry and a whole lot of casseroles.

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