Farmer Lee Jones is teaming up with Rachael Ray to get to the basis of meals with The Chef’s Backyard. The brand new 10-episode FYI collection comes from Ray’s manufacturing firm Free Meals Studios, and airs as a part of A+E Networks’ Dwelling.Made.Nation programming. The present sees jovial farmer Jones welcome an assortment of celebrated names within the culinary business. They’ll serve up their creativity to a selected vegetable picked immediately from Jones’ 300-acre household farm in Huron, Ohio.
Names together with Emma Bengtsson, Curtis Duffy, Jenner Tomaska and the queen herself, Rachael Ray, be a part of Jones within the industrial kitchen on the Culinary Vegetable Institute to experiment and cook dinner collectively. The result’s a contemporary tackle these greens as they’re utilized in new and modern methods.
Right here Jones dishes about his good time on the farm and the way Rachael Ray helped and impressed him.
How did the thought for the present come about?
Farmer Lee Jones: We’ve been farming for 40 years the second time. We misplaced the farm in 1983 and began over. We ended up doing a guide (“The Chef’s Backyard: A Fashionable Information to Frequent and Uncommon Greens–with Recipes: A Cookbook”) in the course of COVID. We’re buddies with Rachael Ray. She beloved the thought and format of the guide. I feel the thought of the present actually got here from the guide. Whenever you’re making an attempt to point out the variety in a vegetable. We are inclined to cook dinner butternut squash like mother did. You chop it in half, bake it at 375 with a little bit brown sugar and butter. We do it twice a yr and we’re completed with butternut. By way of our farm in Ohio we work with cooks all throughout the nation. They’re so inventive and imaginative.
We invited 10 totally different cooks to come back to the farm, choose a vegetable and present the variety of 1 single ingredient. It was mind-blowing to see all of the other ways they might use a single vegetable. After all, cooks use numerous fancy machines and issues to do their meals. We challenged the cooks to essentially make this approachable. I’m not a chef. I don’t suppose our viewers are essentially cooks, however that doesn’t imply we don’t play and have enjoyable and take a look at new issues, so we problem our cooks to make this approachable for folks at house. We had a blast. Are you able to think about a candy potato ice cream or a butternut soup or bisque or butternut chips. It blows your thoughts pondering of all of the other ways a vegetable may very well be used.
Celeste Sloman/A+E 2024
I feel the premiere units the tone for the present as a result of after I consider beets, I’m sort of turned off. Then Emma is available in and possibly modifications that notion.
Our stuff seems to be good within the fields, however while you get a really proficient chef like Emma and the opposite cooks and use their creativity. Beets are so wholesome for you. It’s a kind of issues that I sort of must power myself to eat. Seeing among the methods she ready them. I’m consuming extra beets now. We wish to get as a lot shade into our weight-reduction plan as potential. Now I’m speaking about pure colours. We’ve to get away from these dyes and meals coloring and issues like that. We wish to eat the rainbow and have numerous range within the weight-reduction plan. That’s essential. Emma, I really like her. She is so wonderful.
It appeared you bought fairly emotional having Curtis on. You had been like a proud dad in some ways to see how far he has come.
I’d counsel anybody to lookup his private documentary For Grace. There’s a backstory there. I knew him since he was a cook dinner on the Muirfield Golf Membership 30 years in the past. To see all he has completed and the extent he has achieved it. And he had numerous issues stacked towards him. It’s a testomony to life. We’re going to get knocked down, have unhealthy stuff occur to us and thru all of it he persevered and stored his eye on his objective. Among the tragedies he has had in his life would have made any considered one of us crumble and fall. I’m very pleased with Curtis. A local Ohio man. He’s out of Chicago now and actually has probably the greatest eating places within the nation. He has a restaurant known as Ever. Then while you’re achieved you’ll be able to go to After, which is a cocktail lounge. It’s actually swanky. I imply wow. It’s wonderful, particularly for somebody from the farm who wears a pair of overalls and white shirt and crimson bowtie to enter a swanky place like that. It’s off the hook.
What number of bowties and overalls do you personal?
I personal 18 pairs of overalls, 18 white shirts, 18 bowties. I don’t personal one other restore of pants. That is what I personal. For those who had been to look in my closet, all you’d see is overalls. You already know there’s an previous farm saying you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s earI. You could possibly by no means put a three-piece swimsuit on me as a result of I may by no means look practically as good-looking as you. So I’d as properly go along with the previous farmer that I’m. It actually does tie again to The Grapes of Wrath and the story in regards to the farms misplaced throughout The Nice Despair. It’s an ode to the small household farm.
We misplaced our farm after I was 19. By way of the profit and assist of cooks across the nation. They mentioned to develop for taste. Develop for the integrity of the product. Develop with out chemical substances, and we imagine there shall be sufficient folks that may help you. We had been so determined to thrive in agriculture. After they informed us that, we grabbed each of their ankles and mentioned, “Okay, train us.” For 40 years, they’ve been mentoring and directing us and guiding us.
Simply unbelievable the legacy created
We do the perfect we are able to to develop the perfect taste with out the chemical substances. The dietary degree in greens has gone down 80 to 100% in a 100-year interval. We’ve been in a position to reverse that by means of regenerative agriculture practices. What which means is as an alternative of utilizing artificial and chemical inputs to develop the product we’re testing the soil and discovering out what it’s poor in. Completely different crops will harvest totally different vitality. Guess what? The dietary worth goes up naturally somewhat than synthetically. We’re seeing numbers from 150 to 300 instances greater than the USDA common. It’s actually thrilling to see it work. It’s about working in concord with nature somewhat than making an attempt to outsmart. It’s thrilling stuff.
Free Meals Studios
You talked about Rachael Ray. How has it been attending to know her?
Rachael Ray has achieved so many favors for us. I don’t know if I ever met a human being that has extra generosity, extra ardour, extra kindness, extra soul, extra caring particular person. She has achieved so much to assist us throughout COVID when the eating places had been shut down. One hundred percent of our enterprise was sending our merchandise across the nation to cooks utilizing the merchandise. Effectively, , eating places had been closed, and we launched a nationwide house supply the place wherever you order, we may ship from the farm to your door.
She would name and order bins and ship them out to folks to attempt to assist do one thing. She has flown us over to Italy and we’ve filmed over there together with her. She has been on the farm a number of instances. She doesn’t prefer to be thought of a chef. She considers herself a house cook dinner. She makes issues approachable. She has actually taught me so much about rising your individual pores and skin. I’m not a chef. I’m a farmer, so once we’re doing these items and the chef is speaking, it’s like they’re means up there and I’m making an attempt to know. We needed to carry it right down to a decrease degree so I can perceive and the viewers can. I feel her strategy has been lesson and means for me to be taught. She is aware of so much about meals, however she has been enjoyable to work with. It was enjoyable to do our session collectively.
What are you able to inform us about her episode?
We discovered this number of cabbage in Europe known as Arrowhead. It’s cone-shaped and comes up to some extent. The rationale they develop them in Europe is to allow them to power numerous heads in a small area. They’ll rise up to 40,000 heads into one acre, which is wonderful. That isn’t the explanation we needed to develop it. The flavour is off the hook. You are inclined to put pork or steak or hen on the grill .You’ll be able to order these, put a little bit olive oil, a little bit little bit of salt and pepper on the grill, and they’re wonderful. She used the Arrowhead cabbage. The cabbage had its day within the solar. It was enjoyable to rejoice a selected vegetable and rejoice its range. We all know it from coleslaw or cooked cabbage. So, it was enjoyable to see what she did with the cabbage.
What are you enthusiastic about viewers to see?
Look, we’re a household farm in Huron, Ohio. There aren’t imagined to be household farms left anymore. This has been enjoyable for us to have publicity to essentially nice cooks. I’d have by no means imagined you’ll be able to roast watermelon…Right here we truly roasted it down. You’ll suppose you had been consuming a chunk of steak. This present is to point out the variety with the way in which we are able to cook dinner issues and methods to be totally different than we’ve got ever imagined earlier than. It’s a lot enjoyable.
The Chef’s Backyard, Sequence Premiere, January 27, 10/9c, FYI