Originally posted Monday, October 22, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Carla Hall was an effervescent staple on the ABC show "The Chew" until the show was canceled this past season after seven years, 1,500 episodes and slipping ratings.
As a consolation prize, she now does weekly food segments for the show that replaced it: "GMA Day," an offshoot of "Good Morning America" hosted by Michael Strahan and Sara Haines.
"It's so weird, I'm not going to lie," admitted Hall, who is coming to the Atlanta History Center Friday, October 26 to discuss her new book, "Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration." The book comes out Tuesday October 23.
She was naturally disappointed that ABC opted to end “The Chew.” “We had a takeaway that was very unique to daytime TV,” she said. “People would watch us during the day and figure out what to cook that night.”
On the bright side, she said her obligations with “GMA” are merely once a week instead of three days a week for “The Chew,” so “I get to explore other things.”
Her newest book, said Hall, is an exploration of what she grew up with: soul food from two perspectives. There’s the celebratory elements that most people are familiar with: fried chicken, barbecue, mac and cheese, smothered pork chops drenched in gravy. Those are dishes that she eats when she visits her family in Nashville during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But there is also the unheralded everyday version of soul food. These dishes were heavily weighted toward seasonal vegetables, beans and grains. Pricier meats were not always on the menu. Her cookbook highlights many of these recipes, which are far healthier than typical “soul food” recipes.
“The bulk of this book,” she writes in the introduction, “is vegetable-centric weeknight recipes so comforting they taste like big ol’ hugs.”
Kale, watermelon juice and coconut water came from the African-American cuisine, but they are now considered trendy hipster ingredients. “When it comes out as being healthy,” Hall said, “it’s no longer attached to our experience.”
She believes soul food is different from just plain “Southern food” because it has more kick. “It’s like a Negro spiritual versus a hymn,” Hall said. “It could be the same song, but a Negro spiritual will have more oompah to it. There’s a rhythm and soul that goes into every dish we cook. I really try to embody that in this book.”
Soul food is what helped her get on “Top Chef” a decade ago and made her a fan favorite. It opened the door to her stint on “The Chew.”
But Hall hasn’t lived in the South for a long time. She now resides in D.C. and works frequently in New York.
So to inspire herself, she took a 10-day pilgrimage through the South. She brought along her co-author Genevieve Ko and her photographer Gabriele Stabile. They explored Charleston, Savannah, Birmingham, Jackson, Miss., and her hometown of Nashville. They crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the place where Rep. John Lewis was bashed in the head by cops a half century earlier. They talked to African-American farmers and chefs.
“I fell in love with soul food all over again,” she said. “Also, I don’t think you know the South until you go back and see how vast it is and how different people’s perspectives are.”
One key moment came in Savannah, she said, where she discovered a shrimp-and-grits recipe that wasn’t packed with fatty cream and cheese. Instead, it was flavored with bay leaf, tomatoes, peppers and scallions. “You have this beautiful shrimp,” she said. “Why cover it up with gravy?”
A dairy-free recipe called “Sea Island Shrimp and Grits” makes the cut in the book.
“Cream in grits is cheating,” she writes in the book. “Yes, you have to stand over the stove and whisk for almost an hour, but your reward is silky grits. The only sauce here comes from the juices that the shrimp and tomatoes let out while cooking — and it’s plenty to run in rivulets into the grits.”
CELEBRITY TALK
Carla Hall
7 p.m. Friday. $40 (includes a copy of her book "Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration"). Atlanta History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road NW, Atlanta. 404-814-4000, atlantahistorycenter.com.
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