Behind the Scenes with Good Morning America and The Recipe Club
On a warm Saturday morning, Good Morning America’s Features Correspondent, Taryn Brill, joined us for a Recipe Club in Brooklyn. GMA heard about our Recipe Clubs forming all across the country, and they wanted to tape one for the show.
Just as we were getting ready for our close-up, a last-minute lipstick check revealed that our morning bagels had left us both with poppy seed-speckled teeth. So much for our glamorous celebrity lifestyles!
But that was the least of our problems. Worse was that earlier in the morning we’d discovered the New York City subway lines were down. Six people had been invited and we had no idea if they would all make it on time.
Thankfully, they all arrived without a glitch. They came bearing dishes of food, copies of their recipes, and a palpable nervous energy. But when Taryn arrived she quickly set everyone at ease. In her arms she carried a magnificent tray of noodle pudding, and soon explained it was a dessert from her mother’s repertoire, one the family traditionally brings to every major event. Clearly this was a signature dish that would tell the story of her close-knit family.
At an early age Taryn Brill learned how to cook...thanks to mom, Gail Brill.
GMA Correspondent Taryn Brill says her mother "is the warmest, most caring mother of all."
The camera crew asked us to sit closer than we might have if we weren’t taping this for television. So we huddled on two adjacent couches. With glaring lights, cameras pointed at us, and the boom hanging over our heads, we worried that any natural conversation or spontaneity would be impossible.
But that wasn’t at all what happened. Right from the start we all felt a sudden, surprising, and lovely intimacy. We spoke to each other warmly and openly, as if we were alone in the room with no eyes (or cameras) upon us. And by the end we were all happily amazed by the enormous power of storytelling: how small details reveal deep truths, and how a single tale can illuminate a lifetime.
HERE IS TARYN’S RECIPE:
Taryn says that when she makes this noodle pudding, it evokes memories of all sorts of gatherings, but above all it makes her grateful for her mother, Gail Brill. Taryn is very close to her mother and says, “As an only child, all she ever wanted was siblings. So she had four kids (my dad said 4 was the limit! She wanted 6). She is 110 percent devoted to her husband and kids…no one is more devoted than my mom!â€
GAIL’S DESSERT NOODLE PUDDING RECIPE
Ingredients:
- 1 lb. of medium to wide egg noodles
- 2 cups milk
- ½ cup melted margarine
- 1 cup sugar
- 7 eggs
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 box vanilla wafers (crushed)
- 2 cans of pie filling (any flavor: blueberry, apple, or cherry)
- 16 ½ x 11 ½ baking pan (greased)
- sprinkle of matzoh meal (for bottom of greased pan)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Cook noodles: boil noodles for 10 minutes and drain (add a dash of oil into boiling water so noodles don’t stick together.) Drain noodles and rinse in cold water.
- In a big bowl, mix all remaining ingredients and add noodles. Make sure to coat all noodles in the mixture.
- Pour noodles evenly into well greased baking pan sprinkled with matzoh meal on bottom. Bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove from oven and lower oven to 350 degrees. Proceed to sprinkle entire pudding with crushed vanilla wafers. On top of wafers, add alternating rows of cherry and apple pie filling and crushed wafers.
- Cover with loose aluminum foil and cook for another 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Enjoy served hot or cold.