Cornmeal has a special place in Sheri’s heart as she shares her mouth-watering cornmeal pound cake with glaze and lemon sugar that will make everyone happy. And it’s a scrumptious cornmeal confession as Sheri makes her fabulous cornbread recipe with family cornmeal. Sheri cooks along with Cheetie Kumar and says a helpful hint about the best way to season and care for your cast iron skillet.
Sheri explores preparing and cooking oysters with her favorite recipes where anyone can be an oyster expert. From oyster stew with toasted benne seeds to mouthwatering fried oyster, these recipes are soon to be favorites. Sheri delivers helpful hints on safely storing oysters and tours an oyster farm to see how fresh oysters go sea to table.
Sheri shares her delicious recipes for cooking with heirloom field peas with an extra helping of her Hoppin’ John Risotto with Collard Pesto and an “oh so beautiful” Lady Field Pea and Tomato Salad in Lemon Vinaigrette. Sheri takes a field trip to the Utopian Seed Project Farm and cooks with chef and farmer Jamie Swofford, who cooks up a delicious Field Pea Succotash.
Sheri is in a mood to share her joy of cooking with muscadines. These tangy and tasty native grapes showcase beautifully in Sheri’s broccoli pasta salad with muscadines in a delicate poppyseed dressing, while a savory skillet of roasted muscadines and sausage make for a delicious one-pan meal for everyone. Sheri pays a visit to the muscadine mother vine and bakes a muscadine and peanut pie.
Sheri shares her love of every kind of apple, especially the heirloom varieties with scrumptious apple recipes. Sheri uses apples from nearby Century Farm Orchards to create her roasted chicken with apple pan dressing and fresh apple cake with caramel glaze complimented with a delicious apple cider-bourbon caramel sauce and tangy whipped cream. A cook along with Chef Meherwan Irani takes the cake.
Sheri reveals the secrets of buttermilk and its magical powers with perfectly decadent chocolate buttermilk pudding. Learn how buttermilk is a meat tenderizier with her buttermilk-brined skirt steak with a wedge salad and buttermilk avocado dressing. Sheri also gives a helpful hint on why using buttermilk instead of curdled milk provides the key to any recipe and is easy to save and store.
Sheri is smitten with cabbage. Sheri’s luxurious cabbage soup is the perfect delicious and nutritious recipe and a cozy compliment of “really good” cheese toast seals the deal. A zesty chow-chow slaw will keep them coming with all the flavors and magnificent crunch. Sheri says a helpful hint on how to pick the very best cabbage and cooks along with rock star Joe Kwon of The Avett Brothers.
Sheri shares pumpkin perfection in the kitchen as Sheri cooks with chef Ashley Capps to make a dreamy pumpkin crème caramel. Sheri makes a delicious entrée salad with warm pumpkin wedges and a honey vinaigrette, delights with a whole roasted pumpkin stuffed with savory bread pudding and then shares some helpful tips on how to perfectly roast your pumpkin seeds.
Sheri Castle shows the freshest way to procure this beautiful berry. She tours the McAdams Farm in Efland, NC, and gets a visit from “Farmer Strawberry.” In the kitchen, she shares recipes for strawberry tiramisu trifles and an ice-box salad perfect for your next potluck, while baker Brian Noyes makes a strawberry buckle. Sheri gives a helpful hint about keeping strawberries fresh in storage.
Sheri Castle learns how Sunburst Trout Company of Waynesville, NC, gets their tasty fish from their farm to your table. She heads to the kitchen and makes a smoked trout and potato soup as well as cornmeal-crusted trout with a creamed corn and tomato relish. Chef Cleophus Hethington joins her to make a beautiful whole trout dish, and then Sheri shows how to safely store fresh fish at home.
Sheri creates a country ham salad and a peach and lemony ricotta salad. She heads to Madisonville, Tennessee, to meet Allan Benton, the King of Country Ham, who shares secrets about his legendary Smoky Mountain hams and bacon. Allan and his wife, Sharon, make two-ingredient biscuits and red-eye gravy, and Sheri gives a tip on using all the parts of a country ham.
Sheri Castle heads to Old Orchard Creek Farm in Lansing, NC, to find fresh blueberries. She picks blue beauties with owners Walter Clark and Johnny Burleson and helps make a farmhouse blueberry pie. She shows us how to make blueberry parfaits with pistachio crumble and granola porridge with warm maple cream, and offers a hint about washing and freezing fresh blueberries.
Sheri Castle shares recipes for Low Country-style red rice with shrimp and sausage as well as rice and garden peas in Parmesan broth. She visits Lee’s One Fortune Farm to see how it grows heirloom rice in the mountains, and then cooks with chef Ricky Moore for his “church lady good” rice and summer-squash gratin. Sheri also shares a tip on how to select the perfect rice for a recipe.
Sheri Castle visits Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks to find one of the world’s greatest diversity of fig trees. She shares recipes for pan-seared chicken thighs with a fig pan sauce as well as a fresh fig, orange and bourbon crostata. On the island, Sheri learns the secrets to a prize-winning fig cake and shares a helpful hint on a way to quickly roast figs.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The egg clearly comes first in Sheri Castle’s lemon angel pie and deviled-egg salad. She rises early with the chickens to gather fresh eggs and cooks with food culture preservationist Gabrielle Carter, who makes Sheri swoon over gorgeous jewel-toned pickled eggs. Sheri also shares a helpful hint on how to quickly assess the freshness of an egg.
Food writer Sheri Castle admits her love affair with homegrown tomatoes and talks with the “Tomato Man,” heirloom tomato gardening expert Craig LeHoullier. She shares her recipes for a savory summertime tomato pie and a cherry tomato and black pepper cornbread panzanella. Sheri also cooks along with Yordanys “Jay” Bastardo to make his Dominican tomato and shellfish gumbo.