It's the end of an era for "All My Children" and the beginning of a new one for former "Top Chef" contestant Carla Hall. The daytime soap ends its nearly 42-year run tomorrow, to be replaced by what The Washington Post calls a "food-forward daytime TV show" called "The Chew," starring Hall, Iron Chef and James Beard Award-winner Michael Symon, "The Dorm Room Diet" author (and daughter of Mehmet "Dr. Oz" Oz) Daphne Oz, "What Not to Wear" host Clinton Kelly and celebrity chef Mario Batali.
"It's going to be cooking on a budget -- fast, easy recipes -- to bring the family together around food," Hall told Wheaton Patch last week. "So many of us grew up around the kitchen, but we're so busy that we stop coming together. It's sort of a reminder."
Hall has spent the three years since her turn on "Top Chef" creating a line of designer cookies, competing against former contestants on "Top Chef All-Stars" and cooking up easy eats like these buffalo-style burgers for audiences across the country.
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Servings: 4-6Difficulty: Easy
Cook Time: 30-60 min
Ingredients
For the burger:
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon chile flakes
1 1/4 pounds coarsely ground chicken or turkey breast meatFor the slaw:
4 ribs celery, 1" pieces thinly sliced on the bias
1/2 cup red onions, very thinly sliced
1/4 cup parsley leaves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepperFor the mayo:
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon hot sauce
1-2 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepperCooking Directions
For the burger:
Melt butter in small skillet on medium low heat. Cook onions and garlic until translucent and sweet, about 3 minutes. Add hot sauce, thyme, black pepper and chile flakes.
Fold onion mixture into ground chicken. Gently form four patties. Grill to preference.For the slaw:
Combine ingredients in the order they appear. Place on burger or use as a side.For the mayo:
Mix all of the ingredients together. Spread on burger bun.
A Nashville native, Hall, 47, hasn't always been a culinary master. She earned an accounting degree from Howard University but shifted gears soon after, flirting with modeling, which took her to Milan and Paris, where she developed an interest in food. That, in turn, led to a lunch-delivery service in the Washington, D.C., area, which led to cooking school, which led to work in hotel kitchens, which led to her own catering company, the Silver Spring-based Alchemy.
According to the Post, "The Chew" is expected to feature daily chats on current events, a cooking challenge in which one of the hosts must prepare a meal in six minutes from a mystery bag of grocery items, healthful eating tips from Oz and simple Italian cooking demonstrations, among other recurring segments.
The most original segment, they say, might be something that Hall created:
She calls it "Gon Be Moments" but pronounces it, with a sistahlike attitude, as "gome be moments." The regular feature will be Hall's attempt to keep it real on daytime TV: She wants to prove to home cooks that with a few learned tricks, they can recover from their mistakes in the kitchen.
Because the show is filmed live, Patch noted, all the cooking mistakes will be live, too. That way, the public will get to see that even experts make mistakes.