You probably know The Chopping Block best for our cooking classes and private events. However, many times throughout the year, we also take our culinary skills on the road for events hosted outside of our kitchens. This year, we've participated in the Green City Market Chef BBQ, Common Threads Cook Off, American Cancer Society's Taste of Hope and most recently, CHILL in the LuxeHome boutiques of the Merchandise Mart.
The Chill event combines more than 150 world renowned wines with gourmet culinary selections prepared by 50 of Chicago’s top chefs. This event supports three charitable organizations, one of them being the Respiratory Health Association.
Our featured dish this year was a savory pork bread pudding with caramelized onions and gruyere cheese, seared in duck fat, over a Brussels sprouts and red cabbage slaw, finished with a spiced apple cider gastrique.
It takes a team to come up with the menu item, and it's quite a production to create over 1000 dishes of food. Since we are a recreational cooking school and our mission is to get the country to cook, these opportunities are a fun way for our team to demonstrate how exciting cooking can be.
Since we are not a restaurant or catering company nor do we have that type of equipment, it's important for our team to consider what type of dish we serve at these offsite events. The dish must be versatile and easy to execute in a short time frame. For example, at CHILL, we serve 1100 dishes in a 2.5 hour window.
I love this dish since it is very versatile and you can change the ingredients based on what you have on hand. For example, leftover turkey is a good substitute for the pork. Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away, and this is a great way to use up your leftovers. You can even put your day old bread to very good use in this dish.
The Brussels sprouts and red cabbage slaw was made with a mayonnaise based dressing, but you could easily change this to a vinaigrette using a balsamic vinegar and a good olive oil, or even substituting the Cream of Balsamic Glaze that we carry in our stores. You can learn how to make an apple cabbage slaw in my last blog about Apple Fest.
Last but not least, the dish was finished with an apple cider gastrique. The base of gastrique is sugar or honey with vinegar, but you can find versions with a handful of berries, or a spoonful or two of fruit puree with a half cup of apple cider vinegar or sherry vinegar.
The best way to present the plated dish is to drizzle the gastrique on the plate and place the seared pudding (you can cut it as a square or triangle shape) and top with a small amount of the slaw. Bon appetit!
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