Soup & Bread on tee vee

On Monday, January 23, I teamed up with Karen Gerod of Swim Cafe, my go-to neighborhood spot for vegetarian soup and preposterous sandwich specials, to do a cooking demo on the WGN Midday News. We decided to showcase sweet potato soup, a simple puree of roasted sweet potatoes, veggie stock, and cream built on a base of onions, garlic, and butter, with some orange juice thrown in to keep things lively. It seemed like this would be a good way to both demo some easy soup techniques and allow enough time to talk about Soup & Bread and the cookbook as well. With only 4 or 5 minutes you’ve got to be strategic.

What you might not know: When you do a cooking demo on the midday news, you have to bring EVERYTHING with you. Pots, pans, bowls, spoons, knives, napkins, breadbaskets, aprons, assistant (that’s Amanda, also from Swim), salt, immersion blender, ladle, and of course all your food. We got to WGN at 10:30 in the morning and for two hours hustled around getting things locked and loaded on their kitchen set, whispering every time the anchorfolks across the studio went live.

Between noon and 12:45 we did three teaser shots, where we stirred the onions, placed sliced sweet potatoes on a baking sheet to slide into the nonexistent oven, and scooped them into the pot. And then, we were live and I don’t remember a whole lot else. I managed to get out about 2.5 of my 15 talking points before I accidentally sprayed the cameraman with soup. And yes, all you pros, I know you’re supposed to hold the immersion blender vertically. I was nervous! God bless Karen, who leapt into the breach when all I could do was choke back laughs and die a little inside. What can I say but, when in doubt, go for the pratfall. To judge for yourself, check out the video on the Lunchbreak site.

It was, overall, surreal but quite fun. We left the unfailingly nice floor crew a big pot of sweet potato soup and critical bacon garnish, and Dina Bair didn’t bat a (lush) eyelash despite soup malfunction and some mild teleprompter confusion. Best of all: We got to watch Tom Skilling do a groovy weather dance in front of his green screen.  Thanks, WGN Midday News!