Chef Vivian Howard explores the roots of her North Carolina heritage through a PBS television show, “A Chef’s Life.” Chef Ed Kenney does the same for his Hawaii roots in his PBS show, “Family Ingredients.”
Hawaii’s Les Dames d’Escoffier chapter brings the two together March 18 in Roots Run Deep, a benefit supporting the Les Dames scholarship fund. Kenney is doing kalua pig in an imu; Howard and a host of Les Dames chefs will vamp on the luau theme with dishes of their own.
Howard, with her husband, Ben Knight, owns three restaurants in her home state, the flagship being Chef & the Farmer in Kingston, N.C.
ROOTS RUN DEEP
Benefit for Les Dames d’Escoffier Hawaii:
>> When: 4-7 p.m. March 18
>> Where: Mari’s Gardens, 94-415 Makapipipi St., Mililani
>> Cost: $150, $200 VIP; visit ldeihawaii.org/events
She was the 2016 James Beard Foundation Award winner as top television personality and is author of the 2016 cookbook “Deep Run Roots,” named for the community outside Kingston where she grew up. The book won four 2017 awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, including Cookbook of the Year.
Howard answered some questions via email. One thing you’ll need to know: She refers to “meat and threes,” a Southern term for a main dish and three sides.
QUESTION: The menu describes your dish as putting a local twist on a Southern dish, using taro — what will you be making and how does it refer back to Southern cooking traditions?
ANSWER: I’m doing a riff on a grits dish with turnip run-ups and air-dried sausage. These are all quintessential eastern North Carolina ingredients, so for Hawaii I’ve decided to swap out grits, my culture’s traditional porridge, for Hawaii’s, poi.
Q: Both Southern cuisine and the foods of Hawaii are growing in exposure nationwide. Do you see connections between the two?
A: I do see connections — lots of them. Your coconut cake, our coconut cake. Your meat and threes, our meat and threes. Plus, celebrations in Hawaii (from what I can tell at least) almost always involves cooking a whole pig.
In eastern North Carolina we mark nearly every wedding or milestone birthday by cooking a whole hog over wood. We call it a pig picking.
Q: Are there foods in Hawaii and/or cooking techniques that you would like to explore when you’re here? Any place you’d really like to eat?
A: I want it all — obviously poke, poi, Spam, Hawaiian rolls … all the cliche stuff. I’m also super interested in fruit, greens and grains I may not have seen before.
I’ve never been to Hawaii and, sadly enough, most of my exposure to it is related to the “Brady Bunch.” To be fair, I watched those two-part episodes many times and have dreamt about making a trip.
Q: You often refer to your love of storytelling, and it seems that writing was your first career interest. Do your restaurant and your style of cooking help tell the story of the community where you grew up?
A: I’d like to think that storytelling is one of the primary goals of my style of cooking and therefore my restaurant. We try to cook with and within the very specific spirit of eastern North Carolina. We exalt ingredients like mustard greens, sweet potatoes and air-dried sausage. At my restaurants we cook haughty versions of cornbread, fish stew with hard-boiled eggs, and chicken pastry.
These dishes are unique to my corner of the South. They help me tell a more detailed, nuanced story.
