How Everyone’s Harvest adapted cooking demos for the pandemic era.

Chef Brandon Miller’s disembodied hands appear onscreen in the foreground, assembling a winter salad of beets, citrus, arugula and Italian parsley. Miller narrates his actions as they happen, adding in asides with bits of useful chef knowledge. “One thing about the acid in onions that makes you cry that people don’t know,” he says at one point, “is that it’s water-soluble.” Run your knife under the tap regularly to wash away the acid, he says. That’ll help. Later, Miller walks away from the camera to rummage around his kitchen in search of some nuts – an addition he’s just decided will improve the salad – and when a dog wanders into the frame, the viewers get to meet Lila.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and about six people are gathered on a Zoom call organized by the nonprofit Everyone’s Harvest to watch Miller share this cooking demo. This is a pandemic adaptation: In 2020 Everyone’s Harvest decided to move its regular farmers market demos online. Since then, the group has hosted 21 Zoom cooking demos with eight different local chefs. Miller, who also did demonstrations at the markets pre-pandemic, is a regular. There have also been recent demos by Sarah Cook of Cafe Carmel and Elsah Payne of Wild Fish (a recipe from that demo is below).

Somehow, despite the popularity of reality cooking shows like MasterChef and Chopped, Zoom doesn’t seem like a natural medium for the culinary arts. Food is multi-sensory – it’s both intimate to be welcomed into a chef’s space and oddly disorienting to not be able to smell the vegetables roasting in the oven.

But this is what maintaining access in a pandemic looks like, and there have been some benefits. “It’s been really good feedback,” Miller says. People like that “they can do it from their house, they can do it from anywhere.”

Everyone’s Harvest’s Executive Director Hester Parker says the organization hopes and plans to bring back in-person market demos during this summer and fall. But Zoom will be there, in case it’s needed, and all demos from the Zoom era are now on Everyone’s Harvest’s YouTube page in case you want to cook along.