NC cookbook author Sheri Castle finally has a TV show of her own. What you can expect
Corners of the internet would have you believe that milk curdled with lemon juice is just as good as buttermilk.
Sheri Castle wants you to stop believing that.
“That’s like saying a flat Diet Mountain Dew that’s been left in the car is the same as the finest Champagne, just because they’re both liquids,” Castle said. “Buttermilk is a glorious ingredient that I think people gave up on.”
Believing in buttermilk is just one of the lessons Castle hopes to share in her new PBS NC cooking show, “The Key Ingredient.”
The acclaimed Chapel Hill cookbook author and cooking teacher has appeared on a number of food shows, including Vivian Howard’s “A Chef’s Life.” But now she’ll star in the first series of her very own.
“The Key Ingredient,” which premieres Thursday, Sept. 23, at 7:30 p.m., will focuses on one specific ingredient and three home recipes per episode. Castle showcases the versatility and uniqueness of foods like apples, cabbage, cornmeal, pumpkin, muscadine grapes, oysters, field peas and buttermilk.
“Ingredients matter,” Castle said. “They don’t need to be the most expensive or exotic, but whether it’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or Thanksgiving dinner, the ingredients matter. I wanted viewers to have some sort of mindfulness of that, which I think will make people better, more confident cooks.”
An all-star cast of chefs
Castle got her break ghostwriting cookbooks and later penned popular books featuring her own name, including the “Southern Living Community Cookbook” and most recently a book of Southern dishes for the Instant Pot age, called “Instantly Southern.” She said moving from guest to star was similar.
“A really good analogy is it’s like going from being a nanny and taking care of children and being a parent and taking care of your own children,” Castle said. “(The show) is a wonderful opportunity. ... My hope is that it’s fun for people.”
“The Key Ingredient” features an all-star cast of North Carolina chefs, including Cheetie Kumar from Raleigh, Meherwan Irani from Asheville and Erika Council from Atlanta, the granddaughter of Mildred “Mama Dip” Council. Other guests include Avett Brothers cellist and former Raleigh resident Joe Kwon appearing from California, oysterman Ryan Bethea on the North Carolina coast and Charlotte’s Keia Mastrianni making a muscadine grape pie.
Filmed last fall while many COVID restrictions were still in place, Castle said the show mostly shot its cooking scenes in the cooking cottage at Fearrington Inn, plus a few remote segments from guest chefs. The timing of the show aims to embrace some of the impacts of the pandemic on our cooking habits, including more meals at home and challenges with supply chains.
“People are doing more cooking in general,” Castle said. “(The pandemic) has made us pay more attention to ingredients because there was a time when some things we were accustomed to using couldn’t be found.”
Castle said that led cooks to seek out more local sources for certain items, meats,eggs and greens that weren’t tied up in a national supply chain.
Helping home cooks learn something
Food television has exploded in the past couple of decades, from outlier programming to a broad genre growing with every TikTok video. Castle said “The Key Ingredient” hopes to land in the space between chef shows and competitions, where viewers can learn something new to cook.
“I’m not a restaurant chef; there’s been great coverage of restaurant chefs cooking,” Castle said. “And then there are competition shows, where I think the implication is that anything less than perfection is wrong and that there are dire consequences.”
As the world continues to roll with the pandemic’s next evolution, Castle expects cooking perspectives have shifted. With the show, Castle said she hopes to broaden the home kitchen.
“Cooking is part of taking care of yourself, it’s part of life,” Castle said. “Some people will continue to cook (after the pandemic), some will never cook again. But I wanted to show it’s not high risk. It’s important to me that this show be useful to people.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2021 at 1:45 PM.
