(Music plays) Eggs are kind of an unsung hero of an ingredient.

Everybody loves to eat them.

Chefs love to cook with them, but we very rarely celebrate them as the star at the center of the plate, until now.

(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...

I'm hoping to get some baby chicks for my children.

Their birthday is next Saturday.

Do you want to pet it?

Flo, I think this might be the best birthday party you'll ever have.

A piece of steak which is lacking in flavor, a smear of apple butter, and these gross creamed veggies.

I am brooding over somebody calling our food gross.

(Music plays) Are those the Easter eggs?

Mommy, what kind of Easter eggs are these?

Those are just regular eggs.

So first, we gotta boil the eggs.

Can you put an egg in the water very gently?

Yeah.

No, no, no, no.

Look how mommy is doing it.

I'm going to ease it down, okay.

I want to do it.

Very good.

How about another one?

How about another one, Theo?

You want to put it down there very gently.

Ooooh!

Okay.

Look how mommy does it.

For me it's really hard to talk around the subject of eggs without thinking about dying Easter eggs.

When I was a kid we would dye all our own eggs and the house would smell like vinegar, but now there's this whole plastic egg thing taking over the world.

Please stop the plastic egg craziness.

Dye some eggs.

Hide them in the yard.

So, there's a million ways to boil an egg but the way that I found that works the best for me and keeps me from having that brown gray gross ring around the yolk is to put your eggs in cold water, bring them up to a boil, let them boil for one minute, turn it off, and put the top on.

So, if you were looking for a soft boiled egg you would put the top on and leave it there for three minutes.

Then you would have a scoopable, luxurious soft boiled egg.

Ben loves them.

He likes to eat them with a little spoon.

But for this purpose and for egg salad or deviled eggs or any hard boiled preparation you leave it covered for twelve minutes and then you'll have perfectly beautiful yellow yolks with no gray exterior.

(Music plays) Is it ready Mommy?

It is ready.

So you're gonna take one egg, okay?

And put it in your favorite color.

Okay, go in the colors, okay?

I want this egg.

Look, it's green.

I'm gonna put it right there and let it rest, okay?

(Music plays) Ever since we got the baby chicks my dad has actually been the one who has taken care of them.

You've done a good job taking care of them, Dad.

Mmm hmm.

I mean, I would be more than happy to take care of the chickens but Dad gets out there so early in the morning and he feeds and waters them before I can even think about it.

So, they've kind of become his new pets.

My Dad's dog, Bear, is hell bent on eating these chickens so if we leave the door open at all he rushes in and runs to the box.

How long you think before they will be able to go out in the coop?

Oh I imagine another week.

I think Bear's in there again.

Oh my god.

(Music plays) Where are the chickens?

Alright Bear.

Come on Bear.

Ohhh!

Bear.

Come here Bear.

(Music plays) That's his instinct.

Yeah, well it's the wrong one.

Come on Bear.

(Music plays) A few months ago my friends Amanda and Kitty called me and asked if I would cook for their supper club.

They're old friends of mine.

Very hard to say no to and they know a lot of my old college secrets so I feel like I have to do what they ask.

Hey, so you know what I was thinking about the other day?

Our trip.

Our Europe trip.

To Europe.

I was telling Jamie about that in the car.

We walked for miles for restaurants because she wanted to eat the most authentic.... She would look at the menu.

Nope, this place isn't good.

Go to another place, nope, this place isn't good.

It's not real.

So now look, she's a chef.

(Laughter) I can't wait to show you guys.

Oh my god.

Awwww.

(Laughter) I remember that.

Look how little my butt was!

(Laughter) Fourteen years ago this was us.

Back in the day I would have done an event like this by myself but I'm just not up for that so I've decided to take Jamie Cash with me to help.

I'm not sure how much good she'll be in the kitchen but she will for sure entertain me.

Okay, I have Makers Mark, Captain Morgan...

Bourbon.

That'll work.

Okay.

(Music plays) What is that?

So, we're having a beet and strawberry salad and then we're having these creamed rice middlings, which are like broken pieces of rice that are a byproduct of the milling process.

So, what's this, the rice?

Yeah.

I par-cooked it.

Chef, what does par-cooking mean?

It means you cook it part of the way (laughs).

And it's gonna be mounted with a sixty one degree egg.

These eggs are gonna cook for like 50 minutes in this water bath and then Jamie and I are gonna crack them all with a knife and pour them out and put them on top of the rice.

So it'll be amazing...

If that happens.

If that rice gets to the table remotely warm.

But, we're cooking at the James Beard House, the restaurant is and so we're doing a dish like that with the egg and I thought we'll see how it goes plating a bunch at one time.

And I've done enough of these dinners this year.

Enough of them have been like little disappointments for me.

How was Seersucker?

I saw the little thing on instagram.

It was not my best performance.

Okay.

What'd you make?

I don't want to talk about it.

Okay.

(Laughter) Okay.

For years now I've been doing lot of guest chef appearances but in the past I would toil and tinker and test and taste until I felt absolutely perfect about the dish or dishes that I was serving.

But now I am just pulled in so many different directions that I don't have the opportunity to test nearly as much.

So I've just done this dinner at Seersucker in New York that I had great ideas for but I didn't really work on them enough to make them exactly what I wanted and I do not want that to happen again.

So, I'm using this supper club kind of like a testing ground for this egg dish I plan on serving at James Beard.

How difficult is it gonna be for me to crack all these eggs, keep them warm, keep them with intact yolks, and make the dish perfect?

Okay, so it's six o'clock.These will be ready at 6:50 so we actually kinda need to get this on the road.

Okay.

(Music plays) You're good to go.

We need to start dropping the country ham, Jamie.

What is this?

These are like asparagus kind of ribbons.

Oh okay.

You want to dip it out from the pot?

Yeah.

You're gonna do the dipping and I'm gonna do the egg.

Okay.

(Music plays) Are you ready?

(Music plays) So a little less rice in the bowl, Jamie.

You know, as I'm cracking all these eggs and struggling to get them on the plate I'm wondering like, why in the world am I trying to do this at the James Beard House for even more diners?

The answer is you just can not replicate the egg experience.

How's that?

Great.

Maybe one more little ladle full, sorry.

As a chef I love to cook with eggs because they have this really nice fatty creamy quality when treated in a specific way that just can't be replicated.

Great job.

So, Vivian, how do you feel after tonight doing this for eighty people at James Beard?

No offense but I'll have like... She won't have me so she'll be golden.

I'll have some kitchen people.

(Laughter) You know the bigger eggs are easier.

These will be like little chucker eggs.

But, you know, there's nothing about that experience that will be easy.

Oh my gosh I would be so nervous.

It will be okay though.

(Laughter) What people don't realize about cooking at the James Beard House is that you submit your menu months and months in advance and it is set in stone.

At least it's printed online and in a little James Beard book.

So, what I thought was a good idea five months ago is not necessarily what I would do today but that's what I'm doing today.

I have to make it work because it matters.

I mean, truthfully I think for our cobbler you can put a few blueberries in there too for the James Beard House.

I think it will taste better if you do.

We'll take one of those.

One plat of blueberries.

And as many of the blackberries as we need.

(Music plays) It's the day before we leave for the James Beard House and we're taking almost half our staff to New York.

You know Justise and Allen and Kim are all going to New York.

They've never been to New York so it should really be an adventure.

You ready Kim?

Kim goes to New York City.

(Laughter) One of the things we're doing is a passed hors d'oeuvres that is a take on a baked potato.

We're doing little mini new potatoes that are stuffed with melted leeks and then we're going to top them with lamb bacon and a ramp sour cream.

Alright Joey I'm ready for you.

Y'all may recognize Joey here.

Hi.

(Laughter) He's been eating at the restaurant for years with his family and said that he wanted to try this out and I don't think it's nearly as much fun as it looks.

(Laughter) Alright so, the goal is to fill these up and make them flat, okay?

So, you're going to take your spoon.

Okay.

Okay.

Cooking at the James Beard House is kinda like a right of passage for chefs and I've never done it so this is a big deal for us, a big deal for our staff, and the idea is that you choose a menu that exemplifies your cooking so we'll pass around a little version of our famous tomato sandwich, and our little baked potatoes, and then we have a really nice light take on squash and crab and onions with cracklin' bread.

Then, we'll have some fried catfish.

We're doing a dish of creamed rice grits so I made a caramelized onion stock.

We're charring summer red onions and then we're gonna poach a little baby chucker egg and have it on top and smother the whole thing in some bacon red-eye gravy jous and a little country ham chip.

It's gonna be good.

It should be good.

And the chucker eggs are cool because they're bigger than a quail egg and smaller than a chicken egg and they're really rich so I'm excited to share them.

(Music plays) Finally, we're gonna finish with tom thumb because I'm trying to turn the world onto tom thumb (laughs).

It's an uphill battle.

What makes this challenging is preparing everything, packing everything, because then you never know when you get there like what kind of 'uh- ohs' will come your way.

(Music plays) I think one of the most underrated ingredients is the onion.

You know there is a huge difference between onions you get at the grocery store that have been sitting and onions that you get in early summer.

So, we took the sweet vidalia style onions that Warren grows and caramelized them and made a broth.

His onions are one of his favorite things.

He grows very sweet onions with no harshness or abrasiveness.

They're just wonderful and if you get them after he's had a few beers he'll say something like, "Whooo they're like pure sugar!"

This is hot over here.

I should have let somebody else do this.

(Laughter) Hey new guy.

Where's the new guy?

(Laughter) What time do you want to leave tomorrow?

Yeah, I mean I was thinking 7.

Okay, we're going to try and pack all our coolers and everything tonight so all you have to do is put them in the car.

That's what I was hoping.

(Music plays) I talk a lot about how my role has changed at the restaurant since the show, but Ben's role has changed too and now he doesn't even get to do the things he enjoys about running a restaurant very often like tasting wine, participating in the creative process.

What's on the to-do list that's left to do before I...

Nothing.

Okay.

I want you to have a good time.

Chhh Instead, now Ben's answering my fan mail, filling in the gaps when I go on the road, and this time he has to go with me.

Hey, good to see you again.

Thanks for doing this for us today.

Thank you for having us here.

And it shocks me that while I'm off galavanting, Ben's still able to connect all the dots here, continuing to educate our staff, pushing forward, and keeping this place current.

This is a 2013.

Viognier, as you know is a very finicky little grape.

It's something that we lost the 2012 vintage entirely due to the Easter freeze.

We had another Easter freeze this year.

What made y'all start doing viognier because I know they're typically more of a colder climate.

This does extremely well in North Carolina.

This is a grape that is a thick skinned grape.

It can handle the heat and humidity.

I think they did a nice job of capturing the floral components of viognier in this wine.

I like all these so far.

I'd like to go crazy and see this paired with like a chocolatey dessert.

Do y'all see that?

Mmm hmm.

You've gone crazy.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

(Laughter) (Music plays) Impressive.

It takes years.

Yeah.

Now, you're gonna like it, probably lose some of it.

Okay.

But maybe not since you're Super Kenny.

Kenny just showed off for the camera.

I've had a lot going on.

Gearing up to do all these events has definitely put a hurtin' on my creativity.

So the big shabang for the egg in the restaurant is me putting an egg on a pizza.

Woah.

So, we're going to train Mike over here tonight.

Yes.

And then we'll see what we're gonna do with Kenny.

We can always like, fire him.

(Laughter) I like it here.

Feels good to hear people say that.

Okay guys, let's talk about this pizza.

In order for it to kind of all come together I thought it needed some fat for lack of a better word.

So, we've decided to offer the option of an egg and then so when you pull your piece out you have some yolk kind of nestled in the bottom of the plate.

What I like to do is eat my pizza and with my crust go in there and get the rest of that yolk.

Okay so, we as a restaurant are cooking at the James Beard House We're excited.

Ben's driving folks up there tomorrow.

So, for a lot of these people none of them have never been in New York so it should be... (in unison) Country come to town!

(Laughter) Which we're really good at.

(Laughter) I'm gonna make them line up behind me like my baby ducks.

(Laughter) I told Kristen and Susan, I think one of the things that I was thinking about was our story has a lot to do with people who work here and people who are from around here.

You know if it's just the Beard House servers I think we're missing some of that.

I think people will have a much better time if you and Susan and Kristen participate in the service.

Yeah.

And I will certainly appreciate you not being in the kitchen.

I get to drive the food up... (Laughter) And drive the car back.

Don't talk unless spoken to.

You know I don't mean it that way.

You know what I mean.

No, seriously.

(Laughter) This is probably not the best planning on my part but I still had to pick up those dang chucker eggs.

And I got a little shocker for y'all, the place where we get our chickens is also the place where we get our eggs.

(Music plays) So, what's going on in here?

This is the room where we hatch out our hatching eggs.

These are the eggs that make chickens.

That make the chicken layer.

So this is kind of replicates the eggs being under a mama's bottom?

That's correct.

This right here would be chucker eggs.

Then we have quail eggs and up here are the cornish cross.

They rotate every hour.

So, they rotate in here?

Why is that?

That is to keep the inside of the egg from sticking to the shell.

So, do they do that in the nest?

The mom actually does it herself.

She rolls it with either her beak or her feet.

Oh really?

She rolls them herself.

I feel like I'm hearing little birdies.

Actually, they're in our hatcher now.

(chirping) Oh my god!

You probably hear them.

So, will you come in here in the morning and there will be hatched chickens?

Tomorrow afternoon probably 70 percent of them will be hatched out.

That's so cool, I can hear them like chipping in there.

So, those are guinea eggs?

These are guinea eggs.

We were cutting grass and there was a whole stash of them so I grabbed two of them out to see if they were actually sitting on them.

This one would be like a non fertile egg.

Okay.

Alright, this one was fertile.

That's the baby.

Oh wow.

So, they're definitely sitting on them.

(Music plays) So, these are the chuckers?

These are the chuckers and these are all females and they'll go over here and lay their eggs.

These chucker eggs would be fertilized.

These right here would not because they're just all female.

Okay.

If the male was with them they would be fertile.

So, this is...I'm just laying it out for people who don't know.

Right.

Female birds lay eggs no matter whether they are sexually active or not.

That is correct.

Okay, so right here we have kind of the gamut of eggs.

We've got a duck egg, a chicken egg, a guinea egg, a chucker egg, and a quail egg.

And which egg do you think is like the best for baking?

I have little old ladies that come and want the guinea eggs, want the guinea eggs and they're supposed to be a really rich egg because they're such great foragers.

Right.

Running around, eating bugs, insects, grass, that's where you get your beta carotene.

I'm gonna keep this guinea egg.

(Laughter) Is this the fertilized one?

You gonna it on it?

(Laughter) Sweety!

Come here baby girl.

You're not used to all these people, are you?

Hey baby girl.

How are you doing?

Oh my Lord.

Not everybody has a deer.

No, not everybody has a deer.

Christy, my chicken and egg farmer has a pet deer.

Yes, a pet deer.

She and her sons raised it since it was a baby.

That's one of the things I love about being in eastern North Carolina.

People in New York, they don't have pet deer.

So, what if she thinks she's a dog?

Well, I think so because she really thinks the blue dale is her mom.

She'll follow her around like it's unreal.

Wow.

Do you think if we go around she'll come with us?

She'll probably follow us.

(Music plays) It's very out of character for me to be off site the day before I have to leave for a major event but I'm enjoying myself.

I love Christy's farm and I think part of it is that for the James Beard dinner I'm taking some of my key people with me.

It's not all gonna be on my shoulders and it feels wonderful to have someone to lean on.

He thinks he's lucky right now.

He's gonna really do something.

(Laughter) Look at him.

Oh my god!

(Laughter) Is that how long it takes?

Oh yeah.

Did he just fertilize her egg?

Yes, he probably did.

Well, I'm glad I got to see that.

(Laughter) You live on the farm you see all kinds of things.

These are my eggs?

These are your eggs and there is a hundred of them.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you very much, Christy.

I'll take a picture of this on the plate at the James Beard House.

Okay.

Alright, so we're plating 73, 71, and 14.

That's two flounders.

One 86 crab, one 86 jalapeno, side of fry.

So, let's look at this.

Okay.

Tomorrow we need to get that cast iron flat griddle.

Squash soup, 8 quarts.

I'm gonna do that before I leave.

Cilantro lime butter, that's in the freezer.

Fish, just cause it's down there please don't forget it.

We're leaving for James Beard tomorrow and there is a lot to get done before we have to go.

What are these?

That's the tom thumbs.

Okay.

Yes, I am taking some of my key people away on both a Friday and a Saturday.

If I had thought this through a little bit better we probably would have had the dinner on say a Sunday or Monday when we're not open at Chef and the Farmer but oh no I thought Saturday would be perfect.

That's when everybody goes out to dinner.

Order fire, squash pizza with two eggs.

We're going to end up leaving some relatively new folks in charge of the restaurant.

John is great.

He's an accomplished cook and a great leader but I am a bit nervous about having some relatively "green" folks have their way with the place.

Hey, what time's our flight leave?

At one?

One thirty?

You gotta, you gotta, you gotta come up with some flight information or something.

One thirty?

I've orchestrated this whole scenario where Ben drives our staff up to New York and I fly and he's not that crazy about it.

You may call me a diva but I'm flying.

(Music plays) You ready?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm tired.

Alright, thank you John.

I'm leaving.

Alright.

Good luck up there.

Thank you.

Bye y'all.

Have a good weekend.

Thank you.

Bye.

See you later.

Have a good one.

Okay.

Alright.

Thank you.

See y'all in New York.

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