Honey, I’m Home!

(Intro Music plays) I'm gonna start out by saying that I know less about honey than I know about any of the other ingredients I've covered.

But when you think about it, the way that honey is produced and the role that it plays in mother nature, it's really amazing.

(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) So this is my life.

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

(Music plays) Previously on A Chef's Life.

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

We have finally hired a chef at the Boiler Room.

I am so glad we finally hired somebody.

Yes me too.

Its really just allowed me to be able to do this, the last three weeks.

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

I'm just...

I'm nervous.

(Music plays) So, everyone's looked at the report.

Let's start with the bar again.

This week our cost is at 28% which is still higher than we want it to be.

When we costed out cocktails we realized one of our most profitable cocktails is the whiskey sour short.

And what we thought about doing is having a whole section of cocktails just based on sours.

Different flavored sours.

Maybe four or five.

Cool.

O.S.- I love that idea.

I've never seen that anywhere.

I think that's a great idea.

Yeah.

Alright kitchen.

As far as labor I didn't have anybody in overtime last week.

We've been trying to whenever we have that close rush, whoever is not plating, needs to grab the broom, sweeps up and we cycle out garbage cans if we need to.

I think in the end it kind of helps get everybody out quicker at the end of the night.

Alright, front of the house pro forma, I think we finally got that looking pretty ship shape.

Dear God, yes I think so.

Okay.

(Laughter) For years now I've been saying that Chef and the Farmer needed some kind of restaurant whisperer.

I mean, we're busy.

We're not wasting food.

We're not over staffed so why can't we turn this business into a meaningful profit?

So, we've hired a restaurant consultant and he is implementing a lot of things to make us more profitable, more consistent, and some of these things are not easy.

Again, I talked with him about this.

Even though he's a consultant, it's just a restaurant but then he's leaving and eating at other places.

He's been comparing it and I don't think he realized that every recipe has so many sub-recipes and the amount of labor that goes into each dish.

It's a lot more work.

It's a lot more work but hey you know, we're in the middle of nowhere.

We've been open, going on our tenth year and people come here because of the food and the service.

So...

It would be nice to make a little bit of money off of them.

Yes (Laughter) Which is why we're doing this.

Yes.

(Music plays) Today is Wednesday before Ben's show tomorrow and I'm actually looking forward to it because I don't really have to do very much.

John is going to cater it so I thought this would be a great opportunity for him to see what it's like to kind of drive the bus.

And while he's prepping everything up I'm gonna go eat at a bunch of places in Durham.

So, I'm for once looking forward to something.

(Laughter) Okay, so what do we got here?

This was like my 12th iteration on Monday.

I added just some caramelized honey.

I think it tastes good.

I get the brown butter flavor a lot.

I think yeah, if you just had a little bit more honey in there it would be great.

Yeah.

You just know that I'm there for you to a certain extent.

Cool.

I'll remember that.

We have a ton going on here right now because this consultant has come in here and he is rocking everybody's world.

One of the things the consultant is having us focus on is our inventory system and something that we have here that a lot of other restaurants don't have is a gigantic walk in freezer.

We have that because we get whole animals and we're not going to be able to use the whole cow at one time.

He said you need to use these proteins up before you put new ones in there.

So we've been working on cleaning out the freezer and one of the things I found was like a stockpile of 60 pounds of chicken livers.

So we're gonna do a fried chicken liver dish tonight with some honey, with jalapenos, and scallion ends to give it kind of like a green hot flavor.

So, what I'm gonna do is just heat this really gently and let the heat from the jalapeno penetrate the honey.

Then we're going to serve it over a boiled peanut, celery, and pickled squash salad.

So, we'll see.

I think it'll be great.

When November turns into December that list of ingredients I'm able to raise up a make the star of dishes really starts to dwindle.

We go through about a gallon of honey every week just in our basic cooking.

We source honey from four different people all year long and we're always bringing new honey producers on board.

Are you the honey guy?

Yes, I'm the honey man, they call me.

Hey!

Vivian.

So, the bees are asleep now?

No, they never go to sleep.

But, they're not making honey?

Right now there's not a whole lot out there for them to make honey from because there's no blooms.

So, when will they start really making honey again?

My season will probably start the second week in February.

Cause that's when things start blooming... That's when your maple and your blackgum and your tupelo poplar starts to buddin' and you see 'em start totin' pollen.

And I have some honey in the back that we got from a local person and it's much lighter than this.

What does that mean?

It was the floral source that it was working.

The darker the honey the stronger the honey flavor.

It's just like wine.

As it ages it changes the flavor of it.

Wine gets actually stronger.

You age it long enough it will just about turn into vinegar.

Oh it will.

Yeah.

We had some on Thanksgiving.

(Laughter) So, all of your honey ends up having a different flavor based on where the pollen came from.

Each bucket is a surprise.

Do you use honey in all of your baking?

Not all of it but in some special things.

It's got a special flavor, honey does but you've got to pay attention when you're cooking and you know, you know how ladies are now, they just kind of throw it on the stove and however it turns out.

You can't do that with honey.

But it is a distinct flavor that if you want something special you need to take the time to use the honey.

So, what's like your quintessential honey recipe?

We do like chocolate chip cookies and we do pumpkin cookies and a pecan bar.

That's one of my favorite things.

Thank y'all.

Thank you so very much.

Very very much.

It was such a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll be seeing y'all soon.

(Music plays) You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that we have a major bee crisis.

And it's not about honey.

It's not about honey as an ingredient.

It's about pollination and our world food supply.

There's a lot of hands on deck trying to figure this thing out.

And one of the ideas circulating around is particularly appealing to me.

It's about having a whole bunch of beekeepers.

A large population of beekeepers.

That would mean that basically I would have one hive and you would have one hive and we'd all kind of be keeping bees rather than just a few people in the population keeping bees.

Honey is actually incredibly versatile.

I absolutely love it and in terms of sweeteners it is my most favorite.

I think it's elegant.

I love it's viscosity.

It doesn't make itself known unless you give it the platform to do so.

And some other sweeteners like sorghum or maple syrup have a really distinctive, loud quality to them that honey does not have.

So, this honey has been steeping for several hours now and I'm gonna strain off the honey.

It has this really nice, mild heat but also this green character that comes from the fresh jalapenos.

A lot of times when people make hot honey they make it with dried chilies and umm that's not what I've got going on here at all.

So, just to add some texture to the honey and also add a little more bite and pop I'm going to stir in some pickled mustard seeds that will also add acidity from the brine that they're sitting in.

And then to make it all pretty I'm gonna stir in these celery leaves.

So, what I have I guess is a lot more than just hot honey.

(Music plays) Alright, so where'd you put your livers?

Okay, so they've been soaking in buttermilk.

We're going to double bread these.

I like my livers with a lot of crust.

You do not want to over fry this.

You know, so you would not fry this as long as you would, say a chicken tender.

Okay.

They'll get rubbery and taste fairly gross.

So, this is boiled peanuts, pickled cushaw squash, celery, scallions, and as you get orders mix in a little mint because the mint.

So the mint is kind of there to pair with this hot honey.

You get it all glistening.

So, lots of this.

This is the whole point.

Okay.

(Music plays) So, these are fried chicken livers dressed with a hot honey.

I've never heard of hot honey before.

Hot honey's kind of a really hot thing right now.

Lots of pizza people in New York are making hot honey and putting it on their pepperoni or sopressata pies.

So, I thought we would do our own little riff on it.

Who's a liver lover here?

I'm not a liver hater but I don't love it.

It's in between.

Well, I think these are really good.

Yeah, I'll eat that liver.

You could use a little bit of salt on them.

Taste that piece.

I don't want to eat the naked livers.

You don't really like liver that much.

(Laughter) I like the crunchy part.

O.S.- Okay, places everyone.

It's showtime.

Show time!

(Music plays) Order fire.

One liver.

I don't think you're gonna sell a lot of them.

Can I get a runner?

41 please, sir.

Service please.

Y'all enjoy.

It's good.

It's fabulous.

Order fire, liver.

Order fire, chicken liver.

Order fire, one liver.

I'm a little bit surprised because a lot of people are ordering these chicken livers.

Chicken livers are not like crab or shrimp.

They just don't fly off the menu, but you do get a few diners every night who are absolute liver lovers.

Even a kid in the dining room is mowing them down.

I think he must have gotten them confused with like chicken tenders with honey.

I hate to do this to you buddy but I'm probably gonna... Oh okay.

Hit the road.

That's fine with me.

So, you're out of the liver weeds.

This will be Ben's first solo show in more than a decade so it's kind of a big deal.

He's actually postponed this show twice and threatened to cancel this version of it several times so I can't believe that it's actually gonna happen.

I've got some stuff planned.

We have about three hours before the show and Ben and I are gonna try and squeeze in as many restaurant stops as possible.

I've asked everybody to serve me something with honey.

Hey Phoebe.

Hey, how are you?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm good.

Scratch Bakery is my go to in Durham.

Phoebe is so creative.

And she's made pie important again.

So, what are we eating?

Honey peanut cake, so.

That looks.... That looks great.

It's the honeysuckle syrup with cold milk and a shot of espresso on top.

To Ben.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Oooooh.

There y'all go.

So, tell me how was Thanksgiving?

This was our biggest year yet.

We did 600 pies.

We had full like baking shifts for two days straight.

Wow.

So, what's the number one seller?

It's always apple and then sweet potato are the two big sellers.

This looks really freaking awesome.

Oh yeah.

So, the peanuts are ground up in the cake.

It kinda reminds me a little bit of baklava but with peanuts.

It's really wonderful.

That's one of the best desserts I've had in a long time.

I know, really.

God, I love it.

(Music plays) I love to go to Mateo with a bunch of friends so we can share basically everything on the menu.

By the way, Mateo is Spanish for Matt.

Matt Kelly that is.

I think we're having something with honey.

Are we having something with honey?

Possibly.

I can make you something with honey.

I love Matt.

He definitely does his thing and his thing only and I don't think he got my honey memo.

Using honey?

No.

Don't use honey.

Just make it taste good.

Are you guys familiar with chicken croquettes?

Yes, but tell me more.

I would say it's Spain's ambassador of tapas to the United States.

Which is kind of funny because being a chef, you know it's chicken croquette.

Ahhhh yay.

(Laughter) We didn't put it on the menu for the longest time because of that and it's like every other table gets a chicken croquette.

Because eventually you have to realize you have to give people what they want.

Yeah.

They're good.

And they can be really, really, really, really good.

Is honey a traditional accompaniment?

For me I think it's, okay it's kind of embarrassing.

My Mom brought me to McDonald's when I was a kid.

There's Chicken Mcnuggets and I always wanted the honey.

And I think that's where it came from.

Cheers.

Giddy up guys.

Congratulations Ben.

I got Ben to stick around for two stops but his nerves were getting the best of him and he decided to go to the gallery.

Amy Tornquist of Watts Grocery is also an eastern North Carolina native and she wanted to feed me real good -Hey -Hi, how are you?

-Good, how are you?

-Doing good.

I'm glad to see you, thank you for having me.

Of course!

So, I have honey roasted peanuts to start.

So, what do you do to these?

So, we put them in the oven with kind of a seasoning mixture and a little bit of honey.

You have to turn them every five minutes or so and then you take them out and they start to dry you put this sort of dry mix on them.

Sugar, a little salt.

They're so good.

Aren't they good?

So good.

So this is local romaine and those peanuts ground up around a piece of goat cheese.

I mean I think the nut crusted goat cheese is, I love that always but I love the honey and the peanuts on the outside.

Alright, what do we got here?

So, you have a duck breast with kind of a honey, sherry, thyme, sort of a gastriquey.

I like that sweet with a little bit of tart in it.

It allows you to sort of see the roundness of honey because there's a lot that's not sweet about honey.

Right, it has a front sweet but then the back is kind of interesting depending on the kind.

Honey is like super weird in that way.

Right.

We think of it in the same category as like sorghum or molasses or corn syrup but it's completely different.

You know, they come from a grain.

That's right.

And this comes from an insect.

Is a bee even an insect?

I'm not sure.

Sometimes I say things that aren't right.

Well, I'm not sure either so.

A bee is a bee.

(Music plays) Kelli and Billy Cotter run Toast, a local favorite particularly for lunch and I notice unlike me and Ben they seem to really love working together.

That's a good thing.

So, what are we having?

The goat cheese with honey and black pepper crostini.

Awesome.

And then the crostini is a toasted.. Toasted round... Open face kind of scenario.

Yep.

This has been from the start a lot of people's favorite.

Really?

Yeah.

It's just so simple.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Ricotta?

Goat cheese.

Goat cheese.

Whipped?

- Not even.

- Not even.

It's just room temperature, local honey, and then black pepper.

That is good.

I can't believe they don't whip it.

It's so creamy.

This is like the type of thing that is perfect for any meal of the day.

Like, this is wonderful breakfast in my opinion too.

It's great because you have the honey and the black pepper too.

It's really kind of balanced.

(Music plays) Hey.

Hi Vivian.

How are you?

I'm great.

So, where are we going?

We're going this way.

We're going to fry some bread and put some onions on your plate.

Oh cool.

These are pearl onions.

This is a classic Italian version though.

We basically just braise them in white wine vinegar, olive oil, butter, and honey.

What we do to make it a little more fun... Fried bread.

Fried bread.

I love fried bread.

Do I?

How can you not like fried bread?

I like things that have eight ingredients or less.

Right.

So, what's your connection with Italy?

Like, why do you do what you do?

I've never been to Italy.

Really?

Yeah, I've always felt like Italian food was more about the ingredients.

I don't know.

At that point it's what got me excited.

Not what I did but just what came out of the ground.

Right.

So, you know one of the things I really like about this is the big cracked pepper.

Yeah, the bite is nice.

I was happy to meet Gray from Toro because I feel like we're kind of kindred spirits.

They've suffered a fire and we've suffered a fire.

We have some experience with restaurant fire.

At your place?

Yeah.

We, our kitchen burned up.

It's heartbreaking and hard.

Yeah, but you know no one got hurt and my kids were six months at the time and so I don't know, I got some good like stay at home.

It's funny I feel the same way.

Our son had just turned two.

So, we got, the silver lining was that.

We wound up doing a whole series of benefit dinners.

It was a great, it was great for us to keep doing something.

There were so many of our regular customers and all of our staff and us and I was like this is Toro.

This is everything we're about is here.

It's great because it really made us rethink really what a restaurant is.

I realized that this restaurant doesn't really belong to us.

It belongs to this neighborhood and to this town.

You're absolutely right.

I feel like that about our place.

You know, umm.

I feel like we're caretakers really.

That's the biggest thing.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

This was cool.

And delicious.

(Music plays) Ricky Moore from Saltbox Seafood is from New Bern, North Carolina, also in the eastern part of the state and I love everything he does and the fact that he does it out of basically an eight by eight cube is amazing to me.

What's going on?

How you feeling today?

I'm good.

So, what am I trying?

How about we just do catfish?

That sounds great.

It's solid.

Do you have the honey hushpuppy thing?

Hush honeys.

Hush honeys.

Yes, I do.

What is that exactly?

It's essentially sort of a play on hushpuppies meets zeppoles.

Oh wow.

Not so sugary sweet.

Not a dessert but in the spirit of what you and I know downeast as a hushpuppy this texture would be a little lighter.

That sounds great.

I guess hush puppies are really a thing from our neck of the woods.

I would say that we are the reference point.

Yeah, down east I would say hushpuppies is a staple.

Right.

One can use the term fritter, that sort of thing.

Obviously there's historical references on throwing the fried corn dough to the puppies to hush them up so...

I didn't know that.

Yes.

(Music plays) We love our traditional dense hush puppy but man when it's light.

It's like...

The experience changes.

That's what so exciting for me about the business like, I'm never like I got it.

Man, there's so much stuff to learn.

Yeah.

Still.

And away we go.

Awesome.

Alright.

Here ya go dear.

Oh my god!

Told you.

Watch out.

Watch out.

(Laughter) That is awesome.

I care about it.

I care about the hushpuppy, man.

That's all.

You're awesome.

Thank you.

You're awesome back.

I'm not...

I'm telling you man.

You're awesome back, believe me.

I better stop eating and get ready for this art show before Ben disowns me.

(Music plays) I'm really happy to finally see this show happening.

The turnout's great.

It's actually almost too good.

Oh yeah and there's some food here.

I'm a little bit flustered.

This panna cotta, the whole center piece has not set yet.

So, we've got some in coolers.

We got some in random fridge space.

Hopefully a 30 minute chill down we can start sending some of those out pretty soon.

Random land freezer.

When you dream and stuff like that do you like visualize certain things you want to put on canvas?

I used to.

Yeah.

I don't try to abstract anything.

I don't start with a goal.

I start and then you know, I work.

How's it going?

So, the panna cottas did not set.

We decided that's an art installation now.

(Laughter) There's some that we put in the freezer they got chilled so now we have a smoked honey and brown butter custard.

But, you're having fun.

That's the most important thing, right?

It beats working.

Well, I'm proud of y'all and grateful.

Thank you.

As long as Ben's happy then I think it's a success.

Yeah, it's a great turnout and I was just leaning on a painting and this guy goes, hey stop leaning on my painting.

I just bought that.

Oh, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

So, that's what we want.

That's perfect.

Hey!

Hey.

My Mom came and lots of our friends from our community and that's always nice to have that sort of support there.

Best of all Ben sold some paintings and he has a big ol' smile on his face.

For more information on A Chef's Life visit pbs.org/food A Chef's life is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.