I am all in again.
Let's just do Luke's Diner with Scott Patterson, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all and podcast one of them productions iHeartRadio Media, iHeart Podcast another segment of Luke's Diner. Joining us today is the one and only Carla Hall. Let me tell you a little bit about Carla here, a big celebrity chef. You know we're from Top Chef the Chew Countless Food Adventures, where she brings her signature energy and love of comfort food with a twist. She's classically trained as a chef, champion of soulful cooking,
and an advocate for bringing people together through food. She has just launched her very own virtual magazine, Sweet Heritage, which you can find on her website at Carlahall dot com. Without further ado, please welcome the one and only Carla Hall.
Carla Welcome, Thank you, Scott Gordon Tatterson.
That is me, that is me. It's good to see you. It's good to see you too. First of all, are you familiar with Gilmore Girls?
I am familiar. I didn't watch. I've watched a couple of episodes. Everyone, I've spoken to from my niece who is thirty seven to my assistant's daughter who is twenty something. Watched an avid Watchers like the entire series, like multiple times.
Yes that's yes, that's how they consume it. Yes, it's incredible. So in season one, episode sixteen, Starcross Lovers and Other Strangers, Laura I lead character is all about quick and easy comfort foods. You know, she's not much of a cook, but she does like to throw together some fun meals. In this episode, she turns to yes, Hamburger helper. Have you ever used it yourself?
I use it. I grew I am sixty years old. I grew up like I was there when it was made and put on the shelves in the grocery store. I feel like my mother's like, oh, RERAI jesus, here's the hamberg that help me? So, yes, I've have eaten it. I've put a version in my cookbooks. Yes, I'm very familiar.
And so how would you put a Carla Hall twist on it to take it to the next level? What would you do with it?
So I think, first of all, you're not going to use the box is like the difference between box macaroni and cheese and homemade macaroni and cheese. So you start with your ground beef, but it could be ground chick these days, it could be a ground meat substitute. And then you add your seasons. You have onions, you have garlic. If you like it's spicy, you can add a little bit of chili flakes. Then you're gonna add some tomatoes. It could be tomatoes sauce, or it can be dice tomatoes,
and you cook all of that up. Then you add some liquid. It can be water, it can be stock. And then you're gonna add in your noodle. So your noodles, your little elbow macaroni actually cooks in the liquid with the meat, so everything is saucy and delicious, and so you don't have this bland pasta floating in delicious meat. Once that's all done and the elbows soak up that liquid, they're nice and al dente ish. Then you stir in
your cheese. That's the like a sharp cheddar I would love, and then you dish it up and then you can put partially on top. You can put more cheese on top, and that's it.
What's your uncle, Well, you certainly answer that question. I just had breakfast, but I think I want to go eat some more. So also in the show, if you're not familiar, we know about Rory and a lauralized obsession with pop tarts. Oh my god, me too. Oh I have to ask you about your butter tarts, which look amazing, by the way, I have to get my hands on those. Walk us through this recipe and what inspired this unique creation for it's a snack, right.
Yeah, So my butter tarts are at a fresh fresh market, the fresh market, and I love I love pop tarts, I love pie. So this is a rustic tart. So you just take a flat piece of dough. I love cooked fruit. There are apples, there's cherry, and then there's orchard fruit, which is a mix of apples and berries. And the because my grandmother loves almonds, she put and extract and everything. These tarts have a layer of marzipan or an almond paste, which makes it so succulent and delicious.
And then there's real butter in the crust itself and you just fold it there, fold it over. So it's a snack. It can be a dessert, it can be breakfast. If that's how you roll and they're so good, they're not too sweet. I think there's something for everybody. Some days I like the tarts. I like tart cherries, you know, and some days I like the apple. This is very traditional.
Okay, you're Southern girl. Where are you from Nashville? Nashville?
Yeah, I thought you were in Tennessee. You were in Tennessee at some point, I think last year. Yeah, I'm from Nashville though.
Yeah, I went down Yeah, I was down there. I was down there for a couple of days.
Yeah.
So your Southern roots play a huge role in you're cooking gobbage. Let's talk about some of your most famous recipes. Feel free to add what you think is your most famous recipe, but your your perfect buttermilk biscuits, four cheese, mac and cheese. Yeah, chicken pot pie, Oh my.
Gosh, yes, chicken pot pie.
Sweet potato. It's our tean. Can you walk us through your secrets to making these dishes so good?
I think, you know, a lot of people think about Southern food just being overly sweet. Maybe it's overly fatty, overly salted. I think there's a difference between celebration dishes and every day dishes. You you happen to name a lot of everyday dishes, and I think there's technique in making them, like my biscuits. I used to make biscuits with strangers in New York. I would walk up to people and I would say, do you know how to
make a biscuit? And if they said now, I'm like, can I come near your house and make biscuits with you?
Because that's the equivalent of being a.
Buster right right exactly the street. I love that, And mainly it was because people would send me to place because they knew when I was from the South, and they send me to places that they said they have great biscuits and they were terrible. And I'm like, you know, either you need to know how to make a great biscuit or you need to know how to recognize one
at a restaurant. And for me, a great biscuit is sort of crunchy on the outside and really light and fluffy on the inside, and when it cools down it is not hard as a stone. And so there's their techniques involved. And so I think a biscuit is a blend between shortening, which keeps it soft after it cools down, and butter and you grate the butter to make it flaky, and then you don't use bleached flour. All the people out there who love white lily, I love you for
loving white lily. I'm from the South. That's why they do white lily. But I like a hard winter wheat like King Garthur because it browns nicer and you get that crunchy golden top and fluffy in the center.
M in your opinion, do you have any recipes or dishes that are perfect?
Yes, I think so I would be. I mean, this is not a humble brag, but if I don't think my food is good, then I shouldn't be cooking them, right. I had. I had a fried chicken restaurant, Pearl Hul Soul Cookion for for a very short time, Curlhule Soul Food, and it was a love letter to Nashville. And so I did hot chicken and I didn't make fried chicken for the longest time. And once I started to perfect my fried chicken, it really was one of the best. It was succulent, it was juicy, it was tangy. And
the secret I'm going to share this. The secret is not the buttermilk where you add some liquid in and then it gets the skin gets all flabby, and it creates this pocket of air and moisture. But to use all dry spices, so dried vinegar powders. If you want to do buttermilk, do a buttermilk powder, and you put that everything into the flour and you press it in there and then let it sit for only a few minutes. But vinegar powder creates this tagginess into the flower. It
goes and then into the fryer. So the skin stays on the chicken and it and it is really hunchy and delicious and a little bit tangy. Right right, I just want you to about It was my job to make you hungry. That's what I do.
Kill You're killing me right now. Man. I've already gained ten pounds and I'm still on the couch because I cook. And I'm gonna I'll listen back to all this stuff and I'll use some of these techniques.
I love.
I love all those. I'm gonna try that dry vinegar powder because I cannot, for the life of me, you know, get that that that sort of u chicken skin to do what I want it to do.
It's because you see these recipes and it's like, go into the buttermilk season it, put flour on it, go back in the refrigerator, let it get cold, come back out, put more uh flower on it, and then you're just creating I mean, it's going to be crispy, and it's just creating this sort of wet pocket. But also that you can also add corn starch to your flour mixture.
That gets it christy, Okay, any techniques that still challenge you in the kitchen.
Yeah, the other day, what was I'm making and I get obsessed over something. I'm working on a baking book that comes out next year, and I did not get on the craze of making sour dough with everybody else during the pandemic, and so making bread for me was I mean, I've made rolls. I make a lot of rolls, but making bread and like bulls of bread is still
a challenge. And I'm afraid of yeast. I don't trust when they say throw everything in the flour with the yeast, the salt, the sugar and it's going to come out, because I'm afraid that my bread isn't going to rise. So that is still a challenge for me in doing this book. I feel like I might look y'all, I'm the chef doing bread and the home cook. So come on this journey with me. I don't know everything, but I'm willing to figure it out and we can figure it out together.
Mm hmm. Okay, let me ask you this. You're a big deal celebrity chef. Okay, TV chef. What's the thing that you never expected?
Let me count the bays. I did Top Chef. A lot of people don't know. I love when people come to me, Oh, I saw you from the beginning, and I'm like, well was the beginning when I did Top Chef because I was forty four years old. Nobody pops out of the womb at forty four years old, so I was older, you know when I did Top Chef, and I mean I was physically fit, so I think people thought I was younger running around with those young people.
So when I did it as a personal challenge, when I left, and I think being older, I was okay with being myself, so I think people gravitated towards that and the authenticity. So the first time that I was recognized and I had on a hang up, I had on a staff around my face and just my glass is poking out and somebody says Carla, and I'm like wait what, Like I'm not even trying to hide, but
it was just a cold day. And I think the the being recognized and having people come up to me is a really big surprise because I'm just like normal, you know, just a person. And when I'm on the subway, they're like you take the subway in New York. I'm like, yep, It's the most efficient way of travel. So everything that has come out of that franchise of Top Chef and doing the show twice has really been a surprise. And then I've just turned it into a business, Like what
am I going to do with this platform? What do I do with it? How can I make people's lives better? You know? So it's it's all been a surprise.
You have a favorite person that you cook with, whether it's in your kitchen on TV.
You know who I love cooking with and I love his food. Michael Simon And I was with him on the two and he's from Cleveland, and you eat Michael's food and you're like, this man loves his mama. I mean it is like this food that is so delicious, and so it's just not precious. And he's such a technically gifted chef that I love cooking with him, and I'm always learning something.
You've had. What I'm seeing here a very fascinating career path, haven't you? Accounting, modeling, now a world renowned chef. Did you ever imagine that you'd be where you are today?
And let me tell you. My first love was theater. I wanted to be Carol Burnette. I wanted to be the black Carol Burnette at twelve, that right, yes. And I wanted to go to Boston University. I didn't they were going to defer my admission. So I was like, Okay, forget this. I'm just going to go to Howard University. Okay, I like my accounting teacher. I'll major in accounting. Okay, I'm doing this. Okay, I'll work at a like a Big eight accounting firm. Okay, I'm doing that. Okay, I'll
take the CPA exam. Okay I passed that. Okay, I hate it. Okay, let me go to Motherling and then I'm like, I'm over there modeling in Paris. I'm like, okay, all the girls are getting together. And clicking in somebody's house. I don't know how to do that. I hate not knowing. Okay, let me go to the bookstore and let me learn how to cook. And then I started a lunch delivery service, and then I went to culinary school at thirty and
then things just kept rolling right. And then I know that was a very quick answer to you.
I mean that's brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
And then when I turned fifty seven, I said, what about the theater? I mean, really, everything that I've done is performing. And so I decided upon my sixtieth birthday, which was last year, that I wanted to do a one woman show. And so, because that's the only thing that I haven't picked up, like as it begins, it's how it ends. I'm like, that's how I want my life to end. And I and I and so I'm working on a one woman show.
It's really tell us about.
It is about my life. The framework is me at a clicking show. I don't say the shoe, but it's at the chew and all the challenges that I had. And then there are a lot of flashbacks going back to when I was in theater camp and wanting to be the black Carol Burnett and then like this back and forth, like not wanting to accept food in my life, you know, going Gray on national television at fifty and so all of these different things. It's it has a
lot of audience participation there, like mixed media. There are videos there. I bring people up to sort of be on stage with me, and it's about nine minutes of just me interacting with the audience and telling my story.
And how far along are you in this process? Is it is?
It?
Is it written?
It's written? It's written, I mean, so there are still things to sort of tweak it. I did a workshop at Olney Theater in September and we're looking at directors. It is going to be at the Only Theater, which is a premiere regional theater in Maryland, in May of twenty twenty six.
Oh boys, and I'm going to do it.
Yeah, And that's at a small like black box theater for four to five weeks for about two hundred. The audience is about two hundred seats. And yeah, I'm excited. I mean, it's pure, pure, It's so putting myself out there being very vulnerable, but you know, in my life, I'm I'm like, hey, why not. You know, I'm comfortable with the uncomfortable, which is what I think Top Chef gave me. Just putting myself out there and I can fall flat on my face and okay, I would have done it.
Yeah right. I mean, you can't grow unless you're a little bit out of your comfort zone. Right, the water's a little too deep, and you know that's how you grow. Man, good for you. I wish you a ton of luck with that.
Thank you.
I'll look out for that. That sounds very exciting. All right. So let's talk a little bit about comfort food. Yeah, because it plays such a big role in this episode. What is your ultimate comfort meal just when you need to feel good? You know?
Yeah, so that was in New York. This is an easy, easy answer. I like a big pot of beans, like mixedveins. It doesn't matter what it could be, white beans, mixed beans like a soup, greens like collar greens, kale, and corn bread. That is my fisepta. That is the be all and end all. I mean I could taste it right now. I mean, and to have that like everything is cluked and then you make the corn bread. It's
in a cast stern skillet. You cut that wedge out, it's a crispy edges, and then you take salted butter, not unsalted, and then you turn the cornbread on its side so the wedge is exposed, and you put that butter on it and it melts, and then you have all these other like your beans, and maybe some chowchow pickle or raw onions and the greens. And I am in hog heaven, So.
Let me ask you this, what's the one dish that takes you back to your childhood?
That corn bread? Literally the corn bread. My grandmother wouldn't make it until we were on the inside of the door. She knew we were coming at the church. She knew it was thirty minutes, but she wouldn't The pan would be the cast iron skillet would be in the oven, but she wouldn't make it until we were there because
it would be coming out hot. And I knew once she put that corn bread batter into that oil pan and it starts curling up on the size to get chrispy, that we were going to be eating in twenty minutes. No matter how hungry I was, it was going to be twenty minutes. And it was like the first bite before anything, and so I think that's why that's my comfort meal.
Beautiful. Yeah, tell us a little bit about sweet Heritage. It's a magazine dives into culinary traditions. Your first issue includes recipes tailored for different personality types. What inspired you to bring this approach to recipe creation? Can you share an example of how specific personalities influenced dishes?
So we decided to do this magazine. So with me and I have a very small core taine to four of us, and I'm always asked my team, I don't want us to rise up like me as a pyramid with me on top. I want us all to rise up like a box. And my assistant has always wanted to do a magazine. I'm like, okay, let's do it. And I said, let's do it around manifesting. And I always want to do something that I feel people can get something out of. And so it's like, well, finding manifesting,
finding your authentic self. And I'm really big into enneagrams. Do you know aneagrams? Are you gonna take the test after this, You're gonna listen back and take the test. We're gonna find out what you are. Well, I am a seven, which is the adventurer wing a very direct and so there they are nine different types. And so we did all of these recipes based on the different types, Like if you are an adventurer, what you might wait make? I have to look it up because I can't remember
the different types. I'm gonna look up cold please. And in doing so, I had my whole team. Do I have my whole team to do the test because I want to know how you thrive and and in having the language to help understand who you are, then maybe you can compliment what my gifts are. So and that's what this magazine is about. So right for instance, so so the helper, which is type two, they're the help
or they're the giver. And so we did something very comforting, which is the chicken pop pie, which feels like, you know, it could have easily been chicken soup because if your friends are sick, you're like, oh, let me make soup for you. Let me just come and give you some comfort.
So the first issue is stout what can we expect with the second issue of the magazine.
The second issue is going to be about an adventure. It's going to be about doing something that you've never done before, put yourself out there, but also realizing that you can have an adventure in your own city by going to different restaurants and different cultures. You can do an adventure by doing something new that you want it to do. You can have your just go on a tour.
One of the things that I'm doing with my team, we are doing a road trip to Nashville, and we're stopping in different cities, so we'll document this whole thing. We're stopping in diffferent cities. We're going to Bristol, Virginia, We're going to be in West Virginia, and we'll we're going to go on one of those rides where you're on the train tracks and it's like paddle boats, but it's on a train and you're like paddling along. So we're planning all of these different things and we will
share it with you on the magazine. My husband is taking a train trip from Kalamazoo to Burbank, California, and so he's going to do a piece. But it's really about getting out of your comfort zone and finding joy in adventure.
That's great, so great speaking of that, if you were could share a meal with anyone from Gilmore Girls, who would it be and what would you cook for them?
I mean, I feel like we're talking about Lorelai. We're talking about comfort food, and we're talking about something that you want it to be easy, and it's something that I think she would do. And it's always about surprising somebody about something that they may want to cook and surprising them that they could actually make it. So I am going to say, and this is just coming to me right now, I'm going to add some pimento cheese.
I'm going to have her do a burger because that's my last meal and I want to share that with her. But we're going to do it as a chicken burger because we're in the South, instead of fried chicken, and then pimento cheese, some pickles on that, a toasted bun, and then we're gonna make some French fries and also onion rings and a sweet tea soda.
All right, staying with this theme, Yes, if you were to come into Luke's Diner, what would you order and where would you sit?
Okay, the first thing I'm going to order is the hot chocolate because I love hot chocolate. I don't care where I don't care what time of year. I love hot chocolate. I want whipped cream on top. I want chocolate, shadies. I may gill a bit overboard about what I want in my hot chocolate. And I'm gonna sit in the back by the window, okay. And the reason I shows that seed is because I'd like to see people coming in.
I also like to see what's going on outside. I also like to see people's faces as they the anticipation of coming into a restaurant and what they're going to have and their experience. So I like and then I like to still watch them after when they order and as they're eating. So it's a whole experience for me.
Interesting Carla Hall, ladies and gentlemen. Great talking to you, great meeting you. Check her out at Carla Hall dot com. Her magazine. Her virtual magazine is called Sweet Heritage. Second issue is coming out or it's already out ye time in July. That'll be out in July. Thank you so much for your time, continued success, A joy talking to you, and good luck with your one woman show. That sounds fantastic.
Go check chuck her out in Only Maryland at the Only Theater is that what it's called yet the only theater. When are you previewing this? And when's it gonna when's it gonna hit? This?
Twenty six? It always feels like yesterday, but may have twenty six.
Go check her out. Carla Hall, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much, Carla, thank you.
This was fun.
Yeah, it was great. It was really great. Hey, everybody, and also again, follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com