The Chopping Block Cooking Blog (4)

Celebrating our Executive Chef

April is a special month at The Chopping Block because we celebrate our birthday (24 this year!) as well as our Executive Chef Lisa Counts’ work anniversary. With nearly 20 years in the culinary ...

Methods for Cooking Rice

I graduated from culinary school in 1986, and one of the essential cooking skills I learned was how to cook rice. Cooking rice was formula driven which made it incredibly simple to understand and ...

Burnt Basque Cheesecake: A Cheesecake Like No Other

For several months now, I’ve been toying with the idea of baking a Burnt Basque Cheesecake. The idea was first brought to my attention by my partner Fernando, who stumbled upon the recipe and ...

How to Craft a Non-Tacky Fine Dining Dish

We are finally past the spring of deception and third winter which means we are inching ever closer to True Spring here in Chicago. That means that even though there is still snow in the forecast, ...

How to Un-Boring Your Salads

Even though Chicago has stayed stubbornly chilly over the last few days, the buds on the trees and the sun in the sky are hopeful reminders that someday, summer will be here. With farmers’ market ...

Everything Bagel Strata

I’m passionate about a lot of foods – flats over drums when it comes to wings, smooth over crunchy if debating peanut butter, cheese curds over mozzarella sticks when I’m digging into fried cheese, ...

Saying I Do to Cooking Together Forever

Over the 24 years The Chopping Block has been open, we've seen a lot of people find love in our kitchens. I know of several couples who met during a cooking class who are still together today. Former ...

10 Veggie Soup

I am one of those people who gets super pumped with every season changing. I love the sunshine in the summer, the color wheel of fall, the peacefulness of a winter snow and the regeneration that ...

What Makes Italian Wine So Good?

Italy is still our favorite wine import, outpacing second place France in both dollars and volume, according to Wine Business Monthly, April 2021. So, what makes Italian wine so good?

Notoriously Good Gnocchi

There is nothing more special to me than perfectly light, fluffy, pillowy gnocchi! Sometimes that texture can be hard to achieve, though. I know I have eaten my fair share of dense and tough ...