We were lucky enough to be invited to attend a special episode of The Chew -- their 100th episode. After the show, we got the chance to chat with two of the hosts, Carla Hall and Daphne Oz. (Yes, they actually were as fun and friendly as they seem on tv). You can watch a video of our conversation above, and read the transcript below.
For the past six months you’ve had to be in a great mood and ready to chat in front of a national audience almost every morning. Have you changed what you eat for breakfast?
Daphne: It’s not breakfast, it’s dinner! [ed note: It’s 10 a.m. and they’ve already eaten Mario Batali’s 100-Layer Lasagna and Michael Symon’s pan-roasted pork loin]
Carla: We have oatmeal in the morning. I’m a big oatmeal eater. I enjoy granola, and we have the steel-cut oats, the rolled oats. There’s no time to eat in the mornings at our houses, so we eat when we get here. I’m a morning person! I don’t drink coffee. Sometimes tea, but I don’t drink any stimulating beverages.
Daphne: And then she gets here and dances with our audience at every single show. She’s definitely a morning person. I am not! I’m a night owl by nature, so when I get up after four and a half, five hours of sleep, I have a nice cup of coffee. Then when I get to the studio – I actually love oatmeal for breakfast but I can’t have it before the show, I’ll fall asleep – it’s that warm, hearty, carb thing. I’ll have grapefruit, and that’s it before the show, and then after the show I have my oatmeal, and so then I’m ready to start the day, at 10.
Carla: You know what’s funny about the food on the show – and even my mom says, and people tweet, “You eat so much on the show!” but actually, I learned to fake it after watching Daphne for two months. I think what we both do, is, if there’s a protein and veggies and a salad, I eat a lot of the salad.
Daphne: Even so, the “Chew baby” creeps up sometimes!
All the co-hosts come from such different backgrounds. Have you found, after filming 100 episodes together, that there are certain things about food that you’re just never going to agree on?
Carla: Oh yeah. That’s part of the fun of the The Chew.
Daphne: In my own life, I would never choose to have meat for my main meal. I might have it as a side dish or as a small portion, but I would never order a steak. Obviously Michael and I would have words about that. And he might never order a kale salad for his whole meal. But the idea is that, for me, I make health a priority, not an obsession. So I want to have room in my life for all the different things we’re making here. I had pork au poivre for the first time, and it was amazing! So I’m definitely going to try that again.
Carla: One of the reasons I was excited about the show initially is that you have five different perspectives, and what it says to the home cook is, there is not a wrong way. There are five different ways of doing something. It’s telling our home cooks, whenever they read something that says “you absolutely have to do it this way,” – no you don’t, because there are five different ways of doing it.
Daphne: That’s the beauty of it. All we want is for America to get back in the kitchen and have fun there, and not be scared, and not feel like, because they haven’t had formal culinary training, that they’re gonna mess up. What we show is how professional cooks cook at home.
One last question: If you find yourself following a recipe, is it more likely to be out of a cookbook, off of a printout, or off of a screen?
Daphne: Whole Living magazine!
Carla: I do a lot out of magazines. But I like cookbooks. I like cookbooks for the pictures. I’ll look at them for ideas, look at the components – I can taste them when I’m reading it – and then I’ll go back to the kitchen. For baking, I’ll actually follow a recipe. But mostly, it’s a screen, or magazines.
From: LISA | 3/13/12 at 2:02 pm
The show has greatly grown on me.
My comment is:
PLEASE have them wash their hands MORE before touching the food. Today Mario shook Harlem Globetrotters hands, played with the basketball and then touched the food over and over while cooking. It really was gross.
From: sally | 3/8/13 at 10:49 pm
All touch raw chicken then spices and olive oil bottle and oven doors and everything else in the kitchen without washing hands and thenwipe their hands off on a kitchen towel Where is the health department........that ki5chen is growing SALMONElLA