All Sunchoked Up

(Music Plays) What can I say about sunchokes that hasn't already been said?

Probably a whole lot.

(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 hep 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.

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

I just got a text from my editor.

Is it good or bad?

He's having a hard time.

We're going to have a new dish tomorrow and I'm gonna show it to John and he'll present it to y'all one last time.

OS- Oh no!

We're gonna miss him so much.

We're not sure how long it's gonna take to find a replacement for John so there's a lot of anxiety in the kitchen.

Everybody's kind of worried about who's gonna take the reins.

(Music Plays) So, yesterday I got my first round of edits from my editor.

I just need to see what his expectations are.

Hey.

What is...what is my turn around time need to look like?

And I know you're gonna say, like as soon as possible but...

Okay, so I ummm, I think I can have it back to you by Christmas.

I mean this week looks really kind of awful.

My sous chef, his last day was on Saturday so I'm back at the restaurant kind of all the time.

Thanks, Mike.

Bye.

You know, I think anytime you do something and you feel really good about it and someone else comes back and they've marked it all up, that's not easy for anybody.

I just need to understand that he's just trying to make it better and I was expecting edits and that's what I got.

(Music Plays) So, I've gone back to work at Chef & the Farmer and it's become clear to me at least for the foreseeable future I am not going to be able to devote 70 hours a week to the kitchen there.

So, instead of hiring a replacement for John, we've decided to hire a chef de cuisine and a chef de cuisine will carry more of the responsibility, more of the load of the kitchen than anyone ever has other than me.

It's a big deal for us.

So, today is the annual manners class for this pre-k program here in town and we've been doing this class party for like seven years.

It's so bizarre because seven years ago, I never in a million years thought I would have a kid coming to this party and now we have two.

Flo was really excited to wear this Christmas dress that she wore.

She said this morning, I think everyone's eyes are gonna be on me.

(Laughter) It's winter time and I would be lying if I said this is my favorite time of year to cook in a restaurant, but there is one thing that we get very excited about this time of year and that's sunchokes.

These are mustard greens which are kind of spicy.

Very spicy.

I think that the spiciness of the mustard green will pair really nicely with the nutty sweetness of the sunchokes and I think calling it a chowder will help it sell.

I feel like for ten years I've been trying different approaches with vegetarian options.

Because Vegetarians matter.

I swear!

(Music Plays) I might try to send them through our dishwasher.

Cleaning these ain't easy.

I love sunchokes.

They're sweet.

They're nutty.

They kind of remind me of a more nuanced potato, but they are a pain in the rear to clean.

So, my approach for these is to take the outer knobs off and use them in my chowder and then I'm going to use these.

These are gonna be what we roast and have on top of the dish.

It's very hard to get something consistently caramelized all the way around when it looks like that.

You know I thought I did an awesome job cleaning this over there but there's still so much grit everywhere.

OS- They're impossible to clean.

Impossible!

So, I sweat onions and celery and garlic and I've added some parmesan rinds.

Now, I'm adding the sunchokes and I'm just gonna cover this with water.

It will take them about 15 minutes.

Just before they're done I'm gonna add the mustard greens.

So, the idea for this is like chowder.

Underneath some things that are gonna hopefully evoke meat so I blanched and smoked these sunchokes and I have these trumpet mushrooms.

We're gonna sear both of these in a pan and try to get some really nice caramelization.

And a lot of times if you're in a restaurant you will sear pieces of meat in a saute pan and baste it in butter.

So, I thought I would treat the sunchokes and this mushroom, which I can tell is gonna be really tasty with this butter and thyme.

So, that's the idea here.

I just have to make some adjustments.

I think I'm headed in the right direction.

So, I think the smoke and the mushroom together ends up tasting kind of meaty.

I first learned that sunchokes were a thing here by flipping through old cookbooks and everybody seemed to have a patch of them in their backyad and they called them artichokes here because we didn't grow the other kind so there was no confusion.

But when I actually started looking for sunchokes nobody grew them anymore.

So, I asked my neighbors Jennifer and Hal Murphy to plant some for me and surprisingly two years later they brought in their first harvest.

This is a whole artichoke.

Oh wow!

Mom, this is a stem on a artichoke!

(Music Plays) So, this is Jennifer and Hal.

They're our neighbors.

Probably less than a mile from our house.

They grow lots of other produce throughout the year and so I said I'd love for you to grow some Jerusalem artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes at all, they're sunflowers.

Yep.

And what we're gonna pick is a flower bulb essentially.

Pretty much.

Yep.

And I guess they divide and spread?

They divide and spread.

It's like a potato where you only need a small section of it for it to grow back.

But no one grows them now.

Not commercially because they're not economically a great plant.

They take almost all year to grow.

You plant them in the spring and you harvest them in the winter.

For me, I like it because they're one of the few things that you do harvest in winter.

Most chefs like them later.

They're less gassy when you catch them early.

We did have early frost this year.

That helped.

Can you explain what you mean by less gassy?

Basically, if when you prepare them and they haven't had an opportunity to be hit with three or four frosts, flatulence is a problem that the person consuming them will suffer from tremendously.

We are really selling these sunchokes!

Well, I can remember the first time we brought them in you were like, okay I need two or three more frosts, please.

I can't serve these like this.

My parents were like there's something wrong with that!

Now that y'all grow these do you eat them at all?

Yes.

You can mash them like a potato.

I've cut them up and just put them in a salad.

Like a water chestnut.

Like a water chestnut, yeah.

That's what a lot of people compare them to.

Can we walk back there?

Oh, absolutely.

This is how tall they normally get.

Oh wow!

So, we just go through one by one and pull.

They're attached into the root system.

Oh okay.

So, you got to pull them out.

Oh wow!

So yeah, they're really attached.

They're a little harder to see right now... Because the mud sticks.

Because the mud sticks and it's really black dirt so... Oh, they're gonna be fun to clean too.

You want a little bit of dirt left on them because if they are completely cleaned they're not going to keep as long.

So, the dirt helps keep them fresh?

Fresh.

Yep.

Yeah.

These are indigenous to this region.

Yes.

Native Americans were eating them when settlers came.

As long as you keep them in the ground all winter you have them all winter.

Right.

So, you have a good source of great vitamins all through the winter to get you through until stuff starts coming up in the spring.

(Music Plays) Well, thank y'all very very much.

Thanks for coming.

Thank you.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you.

(Music Plays) Hey Grandma!

My kids are in pre-k and have been studying good manners.

So, they're gonna come into Chef & the Farmer with their classmates and demonstrate some of these manners that they've learned.

I haven't seen any of those at home so I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

How are you guys?

Good, how about you?

Good.

Good.

Flo, what are you having to eat?

Uhhh, chicken nuggets and ketchup please.

I don't know about ketchup.

I don't know if we have any here.

Yes we do!

Mom, do we have ketchup?

I think so.

I think so.

Please remember this is about having good manners and look at what good manners everybody else is having.

How you doing little lady?

What would you like?

Grilled cheese.

Grilled cheese.

I'll have the fried catfish caesar.

I'll have catfish nuggets.

Some ummm, ummm chicken nuggets and uhh ketchup, please.

Okay, very good.

(Phone rings) Oh my gosh!

I'm so sorry!

Okay.

Bad manners.

(Laughter) Oh my gosh.

Dad, where's my food?

What do you mean, where's your food?

You got to wait a minute.

I'm really hungry.

I know you're really hungry.

(Music Plays) It's really hard to expect four and five year olds to have good manners when they have to wait 45 minutes for their food and then when half the table gets their food the other half doesn't have it, it's even harder to expect them to have good manners.

Everybody's waiting patiently.

More patient than me.

It's really hard for me to have good manners after that.

I was surprised but not pleasantly and Ben was furious.

I'm gonna go.

What the hell was that?

The whole thing took forever.

Come on guys!

You know, this was an eye opening experience for us because we don't normally attend our own events at the restaurant and I'm sitting there wondering if this is how all our guests feel, like we're completely incompetent and unable to execute an event that we've done a thousand times.

It's really worrisome and I don't want to attend anymore events at my restaurant.

(Music Plays) This is depression eating.

So, sunchokes and trumpet mushrooms, mustard green bisque.

It sounds good.

I know it does.

I think I'm just having a bad day.

Yeah.

We all had one yesterday so... Really?

Yeah.

Like everybody was just dropping something or spilling something.

So it's gonna be a good day.

Today is gonna be a good day.

It's gonna be fine.

(Music Plays) Unfortunately, I cannot get my mind off lunch upstairs and I'm feeling awful about this dish.

I think it's one of those times when I overthought it and I've tried to do too much and it shows.

I'm just like not thrilled by it.

I don't know if it's my state of mind.

Ms. Vivian!

Are we gonna have a Christmas party?

I don't like any Christmas parties.

I don't want to go to any.

I don't want to throw any.

We gotta have a party!

I'm just feeling like the grinch right now.

I'm sorry!

Get out of it!

It's Christmas.

Get out of it.

Well, I gotta go now.

I'll see y'all later.

Thank you, Lillie.

OS- Bye Lillie!

I don't even...they're like unrecognizable as sunchokes at this point.

I managed to take everything that was good about the ingredient, out of of it.

Don't even taste it.

Don't.

Valerie.

Have you printed the menus?

We can just tell them we're 86 the sunchoke dish.

Yeah, I'm just not comfortable.

I'm not happy with it.

You got it.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

This is not an unusual thing.

I often try things that don't work.

There's a lot of other things that need to be addressed.

Some things I put on the menu last week but was not able to be here the next day to follow up on t so I'm gonna address some of those things tonight and I feel a lot better now.

(Music Plays) Howdy.

Hey Bill.

My friend Bill Smith is the chef at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill but he's originally from Eastern North Carolina and he likes to tinker with the food of his youth like I do.

So I knew that he would have a sunchoke secret up his sleeve.

I have some... Jerusalem artichokes.

Jerusalem artichokes.

They look nice.

We're gonna need to probably trim them and stuff.

Maybe.

We'll have to look at them again.

Everybody, both Miss Andrews who I buy them from and my father both always said you don't want to get them too clean because they don't taste as good.

Oh really?

Yes!

Well, I like that mantra.

Yeah.

That's the hard thing about working with them.

There's always these little pockets.

Like in there you'll see dirt stuck in there.

I don't want to bite down on dirt myself so I actually clean them.

So, tell me what the first thing you do is.

Well we're gonna look at them real quick and see if there are any bad spots we need to cut off.

(Music Plays) Another thing about these is they oxidize really quickly.

They turn black instantly but when they get the vinegar on them it reverse that.

So they look ugly and then they're pretty again.

Oh really?

Yeah.

So, this is your Dad's recipe?

This is Daddy's recipe.

This is the one I use at Crook's because it's really good on steaks.

So, when I get to something like this...

I've never actually seen that before.

Let's just find out.

(Laughter) Tastes fine.

So, I weighed these.

Your recipe said five pounds.

That's okay.

I never measure anything.

I quite measuring years ago.

(Laughter) Okay, so what do we do now?

We've got to get the vinegar boiling.

And sometimes I throw in diced pimento.

We've got some.

Okay.

It's for color as much as anything else.

It's not in the original recie but it makes it prettier.

So, I feel like a lot of the relishes I grew up eating and that I make now we use cider vinegar.

Uh uh.

Yeah, that's southern.

It's a southern thing I guess.

Two cups of sugar.

Three bay leaves.

Okay, that we got.

So, we need two teaspoons of salt.

Two tablespoons turmeric.

That's the big one.

This is what gives so many of our relishes that... Yeah.

That beautiful orange hue.

It's really good for you too.

Then we're gonna taste it.

Don't try this at home.

That tastes really good.

Then we wilt the onions and peppers for a minute ahead of these guys.

We'll put these guys in to sort of collapse.

While it's collapsing we'll grate those up.

Okay.

Some people don't know this about you but you didn't like, set out to be a chef.

I know.

I was in Chapel Hill but I was a horrible student but there's always been wonderful music there so I would hang out with rock 'n roll people.

So eventually I had a club.

A night club called Cat's Cradle.

It's still there right?

It's still there.

It's almost 50 years old.

I can't believe it.

I'm very proud of it.

And because we never could make any money with that because we were such horrible business people we all worked in restaurants.

Then that's when I discovered that actually I could cook or liked to.

Okay, so we need to turn that off.

Yeah.

I'll get the graters.

So this might be above my... No.

How is it that I have everything but what we need?

Okay, so I think I'm just gonna have to run to the restaurant.

Okay.

I'll be right back.

I bought a box grater.

Here we go.

Let's get these going through here.

These are going to be hard with the box grater.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

So, I see they oxidize really fast.

Yeah they turned.

It doesn't take but just a second.

You wanna switch?

If you want.

I'll do it for a little while.

This is after all my fault.

I don't consider it your fault.

It's just you know restaurants you know, It's always something, ya know?

Yeah.

It's always something.

We just lost my sous chef.

His last day was Saturday.

Oh dear.

We knew, I mean this has been coming a long time.

Uh huh.

Umm, but it sure does suck.

You'll miss him.

I know you'll miss him.

Yeah.

We're over halfway.

Yeah.

We're rocking and rolling right now.

We're gonna add all the grated artichokes now into the boiling liquid.

It did not look like to me that we were going to have enough liquid.

It did not.

But as soon as that hits the vinegar...

They make their own.

They make their own juice.

It's taking a minute to incorporate all of the grated artichokes into the liquid.

So, you don't want to dump it all in at once?

Well, you can't.

It would just make the vinegar really cold and it would have to cook longer to get back up to where you want to finish i.

And then nothing would be too crunchy.

Yeah it would be just overcooked.

You want me to get the pimentos?

Yeah let's get the pimentos and those seeds.

There's two and a half teaspoons of the mustard seeds and the celery seed.

Okay.

I'm gonna let it cook.

I think I said about ten minutes and that's probably about right.

Oh, that's great!

I've used it as an ingredient in things but I really like it on hamburgers.

I like it on beef, basically.

Wonderful texture.

Mmm hmm.

Good sweet and sour balance.

It's...your Dad did good.

Yep.

He'd be please.

Yeah, he would have had a good time today.

Hearing how much Bill loves to pair his relish with beef made me think, okay, if I can't sell sunchokes, why don't I pair them with a steak?

And then they'll fly out of the kitchen.

So, that's what I'm gonna do.

(Music Plays) So, the other day when I was trying to bring this sunchoke dish together, it was basically sunchokes three ways with a mushroom in between.

While I think it was an okay dish, we need dishes that speak to people and that people order and that's something that we've been struggling with a little bit.

There's a lot of unbalance on the line.

Some dishes sell really well and some don't and I knew that if I put that dish on there it would be one more that wasn't selling very well.

So I wanted to come up with something that would be a crowd pleaser.

So I'm doing two dishes.

I'm using these little knobs that we cut off the core of the sunchoke to make kind of like a little sunchoke crouton, if you will.

And then we're frying them and they're the garnish for a mushroom and dyno kale salad.

Then we're using the inner core to make a relish, which I wanted to make a relish like Bill's from the very beginning.

So, I'm slicing these really thin on the mandolin and basically building a relish in a similar fashion.

Instead of dotting it with pimentos like he did we're gonna dot it with some broccolini.

And tonight we'll be putting a steak on the menu, which is something we've been trying to avoid, having a steak and a pork chop on at one time because that's also gonna throw things all out of balance, but I'm going along with my husband and partner feels like is best for the restaurant.

And I can't say I disagree.

I am nervous about putting a big ribeye on the menu.

I know that every other person who walks in the door is gonna wanna order it, but I'm very excited about this relish.

It is delicious.

It's beautiful.

The texture of the sunchokes holds up.

It's probably the best relish I've ever made and to put something on the menu that's bright and crisp and beautiful and of the season in winter time.

Uhh.

It gets me right there.

Okay, so Mac, you're gonna sell a lot of these.

Yeah.

So, season a ribeye.

Cook it to mid rare.

(Music Plays) We're gonna throw in these blanched and shocked broccoli stems and some of their florets.

That's gonna be the garnish for your steak.

So Leslie, we're gonna pick up a sunchoke salad.

So if you'll draw up like seven of the croutons.

Okay.

Okay, so you've got your kale, your mushrooms, the mushroom oil, lemon juice.

You want a little zest in there?

Yes.

So, I say at least seven sunchokes.

Where's your steak?

Okay, so plenty of that because it's kind of the point of the whole dish.

I know people would argue that but for me it is.

Okay.

Okay?

That's it?

That's it.

Alright, so we have two things to talk about tonight.

One is this is sunchoke, kale, and wood oven roasted mushroom salad.

We top it with sunchokes that we have blanched in boiling salted water just 'til they're tender.

Then we take them out, chill them down in an ice bath and smash them.

And over here we have a ribeye which I have really mixed feelings about putting on.

Ben told me to.

So, when everybody goes down in flames, don't blame me.

Well, we have had a lot of requests.

I mean I get it.

I get it.

So, we're just gonna see how it goes.

The thing about this dish is it is finished with a Jerusalem artichoke relish.

I made sunchoke relish with Bill Smith from Crook's Corner and this is a take on his father's recipe.

So anyway, please taste it.

(Music Plays) It's really good.

It's really good, yeah.

Nice sweetness to it.

So, I know you're not gonna have any trouble selling ribeyes and pork chops but please sell something else.

Alright, I'm looking for two sunchokes, two chops, and a strip medium.

The mushrooms are fried so it's like different textures coming together.

It's really good.

OS- That's amazing.

Alright in five minutes I'm looking for two chops, a ribeye medium, and an ABC.

I was right.

Everybody ordered steak.

A few people ordered pork chops.

But they ordered steak with sunchoke relish and they tried something they probably never had before and they were kind of sure they were not gonna like it and I changed their minds.

That also...gets me right there.

I'm so silly.

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