(Music plays) "Ca-bage."

That's cabbage and my attempt to make it sound fancy.

Seriously though, cabbage makes an appearance in almost every cuisine on the planet.

It feeds a lot of people.

(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.

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

Give us a smile.

Hi!

Today is the first of fourteen days of shooting photos for the book.

You know, I'm trying to allow Justise and John to collaborate to come up with menu items.

It's a lot more on me and a lot more on Justise because we have to come up with things that make sense for our concept but are also a fun and a little bit different and new.

(Music plays) We eat a whole lot of cabbage here in Eastern North Carolina and usually it is inside of a barbecue plate.

Hey.

OS- What's up?

My friend, Sam Jones runs one of the most well known barbecue joints in the whole world.

The Skylight Inn and his family, they're like barbecue royalty and I love their slaw.

So, I know y'all have a really complex menu here.

I grew up eating here.

Yeah.

So, it's whole hog barbecue, cole slaw, corn bread.

We have thrown a curve.

Now, we do have chicken.

Well, not everybody eats pork.

Unfortunately not and that's something we haven't been able to figure out why.

Everybody's got a right to be wrong, I guess.

(Laughter) So, I'm going to Feast Portland this weekend which is a food festival.

I'm participating in this event called Smoke and I guess because I'm from Eastern North Carolina they think that I cook over a live fire all the time.

Of course.

Everything.

I mean, I don't.

So I decided I would do cabbage.

That's kind of a cop out but...

I know.

(Laughter) So, my idea is to take cabbage and kind of make the whole package taste like the experience of eating here.

So, I've got a cornbread product.

I'm gonna have pig ears that are fried with cornmeal and I'm gonna have a barbecued cabbage that's cooked in stock made from your pork bones and then a dressing that would be something like a slaw dressing, which I know is really complicated because it's gonna take us about three hours to make.

Not at all.

We call it slaw juice.

Slaw juice.

So this thing here is the slaw machine.

It's actually an old hobart grinder.

And your slaw is a lot finer than most.

It's almost minced.

Yeah.

I like a sweet slaw myself.

I do too.

I think on our style of pork for instance it should be a sweet slaw.

Yeah because the pork is really tangy and fatty and I think the sweetness balances it.

When you fix a pork sandwich here, it's automatic that slaw's coming on it.

That may be in the Bible somewhere but I'm not sure.

(Laughter) So, how much cabbage do you go through everyday?

It varies.

We'll use any from fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds a week.

Holy!

Yeah.

(Laughter) So, did you have a job in here when you were a kid?

When I was a child my father who's a baptist minister, left to go to church.

One of the guys walked up and said, hey man, we're about out of cole slaw.

I thought, that be awesome if I knew how to make it.

(Laughter) And I called my Dad on the phone.

Everything he told me was "about."

Yeah.

Put about this of mustard.

Put about this of mayonnaise and I thought, there is no way I am going to get this slaw right.

By I guess the good Lord smiling upon me, we made it and it tasted right.

Well, you've probably have eaten it, you know five thousand times... -Oh yeah.

-...at that point.

So you knew at least what it should look like.

And I asked everybody in here, hey taste this before we put it out front.

Make sure it's right.

So, can we cut some cabbage?

We can.

That's a big ol' head of cabbage.

You're gonna think I'm weird.

I like cutting with a bread knife.

Really?

Why?

Just because.

It's too flexible.

Michael's gonna talk trash to me about using this knife.

I know.

I can't believe you're using that knife.

The way you got your hand here and the head of cabbage and you're going into it to take the core out.

Hey, the bread knife works.

Don't do it like this!

(Laughter) Although I'm not doing that great.

I'm not as strong as y'all.

It's easy preaching, hard living.

(Laughter) Cabbage is one of those things that's kind of like, I don't want to say poor peope food but it's always aroud.

Spring, winter, summer, and slaw is as integral to Eastern North Carolina barbece as the barbecue, in my opinion.

You're very correct.

That's enough there for a batch.

Every person that makes slaw has their own little thing that they do different.

The recipe is the same but the method will be different.

Okay.

So me for instance, I always will put one stand of cabbage in here to start with.

You call that a stand of cabbage?

That would come from the term like lard stand?

-Uh huh.

-Okay.

(Music plays) That's a lot of sugar!

We've only begun.

Oh my god!

(Laughter) I am shocked right now!

Seriously?

I am.

That's gonna be eight gallons of cole slaw.

Okay I thought that was just for that amount of cabbage.

Oh no, that's a pure diabetic emergency.

I know.

Really!

(Laughter) You got your yellow mustard.

No Grey Poupon up in the Skylight Inn.

No.

This is health food right here.

It is cabbage.

It is cabbage.

It's a little ridiculous what these things cost but they are so worth the time it saves.

There it is!

That's it.

I always look for that to start juicing up.

I don't like a slaw that's not juicy.

No.

I like juicy slaw.

Absolutely.

And so if I was gonna make me a sandwich right now I would get my slaw out of this pool of juice.

That is awesome.

Yeah, cause that leaches down into the vinegary barbecue.

It's really, I can't wait to have lunch today at 10 am.

(Music plays) So, do you have some bones for me?

Yeah.

We actually put them in the fridge for you.

Awesome.

And your grandfather opened this place.

1947 was when he opened.

I relate to you because we're close to the same age and running a business in Eastern North Carolina and living close to your family.

Yeah, well that and we've talked before, we have similar raising.

The beliefs your parents have.

Our parents are about the same people.

That's right.

I wish my Dad was here this morning because he's a funny guy.

I see him just about every time I come him.

He's in that place where he really ought to be taking it easy, but my Granddad was such a taskmaster, you know?

You never did anything to suit him.

A lot like my Dad.

I haven't done anything to suit him in my life.

And so I think part of my Dad's thing is he feels guilty if he doesn't come here.

Right, right.

He's still hearing his father.

That's exactly what I think.

Yeah, my Dad in particular, the harder I work the more like tired I look and the more stretched I am, the prouder he is of me.

I thought my Dad and my Grandfather were crazy because we only closed Thanksgiving Day.

My Grandmother when it came lunchtime would say, one of you boys go up to the store and tell your Granddaddy it's time to eat and he would be just standing at that front counter staring out them two front doors.

Just like this.

Smoking a cigarette.

And I look back on it now and I often think you know, what was he thinking about?

Because I catch myself being the same way to an extent of never being able to disconnect.

Yeah.

And I always said my work was not gonna get in the way of my life and here I am 34 years old and I work the next three weeks 7 days a week.

I work a lot and when I have time off I feel like I can't even umm, engage.

I have a theory that you work away the best years of your life and then you die.

(Laughter) That may sound terrible but there's got to be a little shred of truth in it.

(Music plays) I just went to Skylight Inn and got bones.

I'm gonna make a Skylight stock.

And then, do we have any extra bacon fat at the restaurant?

Okay, thank you very much.

Alright, bye.

On Friday I leave for Portland and I'm gonna make a stock with these bones and I'm going to cook cabbage leaves in the stock so that they take on like a little bit of a smoky aroma and flavor.

Then at the event I'm going to char the cabbage or caramelize the cabbage over live fire, on a grill basically.

Okay.

That smells just like Skylight Inn.

Hmm, there's some teeth.

Pig teeth.

I guess I got one of the heads.

(Music plays) Typically I would put like mirepoix, which is onions, carrots, and celery in any stock that I make, but I'm really just trying to make a broth that is just smoky and porky so I'm not gonna mess with all that.

I've never been to Portland before and I don't know a whole lot of chefs personally from the West Coast, so this is kind of like my debut if you will!

Anyway I don't want to embarrass myself and I want to do a really good job, but it's a very unknown territory for me.

So, I'm gonna let that come up to a boil and cook for a few hours and then I'm probably gonna reduce it by half so that it's really smoky.

We'll see.

When you do events like this you have to tell organizers what your dish is gonna be several months in advance.

I have not been focused on it at all because I have been literally working every single day on my book.

So, this is the wall.

For the egg chapter I wanted to have my Mom making her deviled eggs and I think it turned out just so beautiful.

My Mom, you know, has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was 16 and always looked at cooking as kind of a burden.

But there's two things that she loves: banana pudding and deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs in particular are one of the most tedious things that you can make.

So, the fact that she has these deformed hands that make any tedious work in the kitchen even harder and the fact that she would choose to make deviled eggs, it was always kind of interesting to me so I wanted to show her doing that and kind of exalt her.

I take someone different on just about every cooking event I have.

This time I'm taking Eric, the chef at the Boiler Room.

So, we're gonna travel with some coolers and we'll pack all that stuff up Thursday.

My friend Jason Vincent from Chicago who is also a chef will be meeting us there and he's gonna help us on Saturday.

Basically, what we're making is kind of barbecued cabbage.

Okay.

And below the piece of caramelized cabbage I want it to just feel like a creamy sauce.

This morning we made slaw at Skylight Inn.

So it's like really finely minced and there's like this juice that comes out and I thought if I could make something that tastes like this juice.

That would be really cool.

So, that's what I'm striving for.

Sounds good.

Alright awesome.

-Thanks Chef.

-Thank you.

Not a problem.

(Music plays) Cabbage is notoriously easy to grow, except this year.

Here's just a few cabbage right here.

See how they're right ragged looking.

Uh huh.

Is that from the hens?

That's from the hens pecking.

So, you grow cabbage in the spring and the fall?

Yeah.

Is it typically harder in the fall or just this year?

Just this year.

Oh really?

Most of the time they do good going into the cool weather.

So these are in the brassica family.

Absolutely.

And brassica is also broccoli, and cauliflower, and collards, and brussel sprouts... Kale.

Kale.

This basic head of green cabbage is probably the most pervasive in all cultures.

You know.

I was fixing to say, everybody eats cabbage.

All over the world people eat green cabbage.

Make kraut and kimchi and oh my!

What do you think about all these outer leaves?

Wonderful to eat, I think.

If people would just eat them.

They are just a little tougher.

Yeah, yeah cook it down just like a collard.

Yeah and in our pots of cabbage that I grew up eating there was always some really dark leaves in there.

I love the green in it.

I can't stand somebody cook cabbage and it's all white.

Right.

The outer leaves are a little bit more bitter, wouldn't you say?

Hard to say.

You want to let's taste one and see?

Yeah.

(Music plays) Not necessarily.

It's a little bit more bitter than like the inner leaf.

I guess it is.

Probably just more flavor, period.

Yeah.

So which one?

I hate to cut your two heads of cabbage.

No, no, no, no, don't feel bad!

This is your row of cabbage.

I told everybody if they cut one of these cabbages I was gonna kill 'em!

Because they've been eyeballing 'em.

There it is.

Oh yeah.

How big a pot of cabbage you gonna cook?

Not very big.

Clearly.

(Laughter) We not only eat a lot of slaw here in Eastern North Carolina.

We also eat a lot of stewed cabbage and I love learning the way Lillie likes to do things so I'm gonna have her show me how she cooks Warren's entire cabbage harvest.

How do we start the cabbage?

We got to start the sausage first.

Okay.

Okay, I got that right there.

Now, put just a little bit more water.

Okay.

I'll put it on.

(Music plays) Alright, so we got the sausage on.

How are we gonna to cut this?

So, you want some greenery in it?

I do.

I like a variation in color.

And you could leave these stems in there too but you don't like the stem?

The stem will make you have to cook.

I want it crunchy.

Oh okay.

Not real soft.

So, you take the stem out so you don't have to cook the whole thing as long.

Uh huh.

Do you have a three legged dog out there?

I do.

His name Nettles.

That's Nettles.

I don't think I've ever seen him before.

Yeah, he's a little shy.

Okay, I'm gonna do my cabbage this way.

Okay.

I'm gonna take it and come down here like this and just like this and then cut across like that.

By doing that you cut it into nice bite sized pieces.

Sometimes when I get cabbage in a restaurant and you know, you got this long piece that comes up and burns your chin.

See how your... -Fat's come out.

-Mmm hmmm.

About how long will this all take because I'm starving?

I don't know!

I never time nothin'!

Now, take and put your fresh cabbages in there.

I'm just gonna go right in that pot.

Okay, so do I put the top on?

Put the lid up there.

Stewed cabbage goes well with a lot of things, but I think it goes particularly well with thin, pan fried pork chops and cornbread.

The outer leaves make this cabbage so pretty.

Put some salt in there.

Okay.

So, I'm just testing for doneness, right?

Right.

When you got it crunchy.

The cabbage is good.

It got a little crunch to it too.

I like it with the sausage.

Well, we ain't got many cabbage but they're good cabbage.

(Music plays) So, I'm getting ready to leave tomorrow morning for Feast Portland and I'm doing a kind of vegetable focs take on Eastern North Carolina style barbecue.

I'm gonna have barbecued cabbage so these leaves are gonna get cooked right now in a stock made from the bones from Skylight Inn and they're gonna get chilled down.

Hopefully tonight I'm gonna freeze them in a chest freezer at my house and then fly them to Portland in a suitcase.

And my goal is to get this done so that I can be home in order to at least put my kids to bed before we go.

What I'm doing here is trying to get about 60 servings in each bag.

We're gonna cook these here or just get them translucent and flexible.

So, we'll take this stock.

See how it's really gelatinous.

You can't tell this but it's very smoky smelling.

Just put a little on top here and as it heats up it will melt down and hopefully coat all the cabbage.

I know it seems like a lot of work to put all this cabbage in these bags but they're gonna have to go in bags eventually to travel across the country to Portland so I may as well cook them in the bag.

And what this does, it just holds the water at a very precise temperature.

And these bags, theoretically suck out all the air and make whatever cooking medium you choose to use you know, the only thing that is in contact with this leaf the whole time.

It's important that this cabbage continues to have some texture.

You know, we don't want it to be cooked all the way through and be really soft because we're gonna cook it again in Portland.

And then I'm gonna put them in an ice bath so they cool down really quickly.

So, the other day when we were at Skylight Inn and Sam was talking about his favorite part of the slaw was the juice that rises to the top, I started thinking that would be kind of cool as my sauce.

So, this is cabbage juice.

I'm gonna whisk just a little bit of buttermilk and some sugar because you know Sam used a lot of sugar.

A little salt and mustard and a touch of mayonnaise so I can just test one of my dishes before I go so I'm not out there like a fool putting something together that's never been put together.

Hey Chef.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

I've got some pig ears for you.

150 ears.

I think they're gonna get diced small like this and then we need to get them really cold.

Alright, sounds good.

Cool.

Thank you.

No problem.

Believe it or not ears are one of my favorite parts of a pig.

I love the texture of the cartilage.

So my idea is to make a pig ear hushpuppy.

I think that's a good way to introduce people to this part.

Okay, I'm gonna see if I can fry these.

(Music plays) You want to try a pig ear puppy?

What do you think about the texture?

Never thought I would have eaten that.

It's fine.

(Laughter) No, it's good!

That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

I get the porkiness.

Yeah, like gelatinous... Yeah, but I don't get any toughness.

Kim's come a long way.

I was gonna say I've come a long way.

(Music plays) This is something we're gonna do before service.

So there's two steps in this process.

We're gonna blanch these.

Why don't you go ahead and start putting the cabbage in the beef stock.

You just want it to be tender.

I'm gonna show you how much longer.

I've been working on the book pretty much nonstop for like the past eight months and John has really stepped up and taken a strong interest in creating dishes and teaching.

I'm very proud of him.

Okay.

So, tell me what we've got going on here.

So, I smoked some beef stock and finished with some butter and blanched the cabbage in it and made a country-style beef sausage instead of pork and that's a handmade cavatelli.

The relish is preserved tomato, chervil parsley, and...

Peanuts.

Fried peanuts.

I love the peanuts.

They make a really nice... Yeah.

Contrast in texture here.

I mean it's like Italian but it's still like, Southern.

I really like the cabbage in there.

I know that was kind of a last minute thing but I think it's nice.

I'm happy with that.

Yeah.

Great.

Awesome.

Great job.

(Music plays) So, I'm on my last bag.

Sorry, I'm kind of delirious.

I've been separating cabbage leaves since nine this morning.

I often have ideas that are conceptually very interesting and in here they work really well and I usually have time to flesh out the ideas, but in this case I am cooking the cabbage and I'm going to grill it at the event in Portland and that's really not the way I like to do things.

What I have had is a whole day to think about how I probably should have just smoked a piece of meat.

I think it's good.

I'm just such a poor judge of my own work.

I don't like anything that I do.

Alright, pack up.

Get this show on the road, literally.

(Music plays) What time are you going home?

In just a minute.

I'm trying to get home to spend just a little bit of time with them.

Okay.

I travel a lot.

I have ever since my children were born.

So when I'm leaving on a trip they're not hanging onto my leg crying as I walk out the door.

Sometimes I wish they would.

Mommy I miss Daddy.

Well Daddy will be home in the morning.

He's going to take you to school tomorrow.

Mommy's got to go on a trip.

But, at this point I get to tuck them in.

I get to sing them songs and read them books.

I get to be at home more at night than I ever have been.

(Vivian and kids singing You Are My Sunshine ) 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."