August Classes:

  ›› Food and Wine of
      Napa Valley
  ›› Night in Barcelona
  ›› You Say Tomato
  ›› Margaritaville
  ›› Indian Vegetarian
  ›› Whole Grain Goodness
  ›› Summer Cocktail
      Party
  ›› Focus on Canning
      and Pickling

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Kitchen Confidential

Chopping Block Chef Linnzie Payne recommends freezing recently scooped cookie dough. The cookies, instead of flattening out and being too thin, will hold their shape better - even be nice and chewy in the middle.

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Stuff We're Into:
Bialetti Italian Coffee Maker

Claire Bryant, our June Employee of the month loves the Bialetti Moka Express. These inexpensive, stovetop coffee makers are the simplest way to make great, Italian-style espresso. They work on gas, electric, and glass ranges alike and require no filters or outside equipment. It also looks great as a display piece on your stovetop!

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Mark Your Calendar:
Lincoln Square Garden Walk

This event, in its fourth year, features local residents displaying how they incorporate the natural world into their own urban lots. There's also information about composting, recycling, gardening, tree health, neighborhood space, and green building materials to help all city dwellers get greener.

Saturday, August 2, from 10-5:30pm at Giddings Plaza (4731 N. Lincoln Ave).

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September Classes:
  ›› Seasonal Cooking
      with Paul Virant
  ›› Focus on Poultry
  ›› Focus on
      European Pastries

Dear Friends of The Chopping Block,

Now we're going for star power.

We are tremendously excited to introduce our new class program at the Chopping Block: the Great Chef Series! Starting in August, these classes will connect great chefs from around the country with you, our students, in an intimate, hands-on environment.

First up in our Great Chef Series is Gourmet magazine's Lillian Chou. Chou spent eight years in Asia and has worked with such culinary stars as Jacques Torres, Alain Ducasse and Pierre Hermé. Her two-day Chinese Cooking class will feature basic skills on day one - such as Chinese cleaver knife skills, stir-fry flavor dynamics, and wok techniques - followed by a day of applying those skills to construct great chinese meals. As if that's not enough, she's just flat-out fun to work with: watch her give a tour of her own Gourmet test kitchen.

Besides regional cuisine classes like Chou's, upcoming events in the Great Chefs Series will focus on seasonality (with Vie Restaurant's Paul Virant in September) and pastry (Marked For Dessert's Mark Seaman in October). Don't miss this unique opportunity to work side by side with some of the Great Chefs of our time!

While we say hello to new classes, we must sadly prepare to part with others (for a while). It's the last month for our outdoor grilling classes on our patio at Lincoln Square. We're grilling everything from smoked peppercorn pork tenderloin to poundcake (that's right - dessert on the grill). It's also the last hurrah for Lincoln Square's Thursday Night Summer Concert series. Either one makes a perfect way to relish the summer season's waning warmth. So don't roll over and watch summer's train leave the station - let's go out swinging!

Through new beginnings and fond farewells, we look forward to seeing all of you this month at the Chopping Block.

Happy Cooking!

Shelley Young, Founder

AUGUST PROMOTION: 20% OFF COOKBOOKS

Libraries may not let you take out reference books, but we don't roll that way at the Chopping Block. In fact, we make them cheaper. This month's promotion slices 20% off all of our cooking tomes, including James Peterson's fabulous "On Cooking" and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto's debut "The New Art of Japanese Cooking".  Come on in, peruse the shelves, and kiss those late fees goodbye.

So you think you know wine? Starting in August, Wine Goddess Diana Hamann is uncorking our new Master Wine Class series. This series will move beyond the basics and study regions, styles, and techniques with more depth. First up: sake! We demystify this Japanese libation with sake history, food pairings, and a tasting of its various regional styles.

Be advised, the Master Wine Classes sold out quickly in the last go around, so sign up early and often--we hope to see you there!

In Season:

Summer never seems to last long enough. It seems to sense this, too - why else, then, would it cram so much goodness into the last month of the season? Like a student on the eve of final exams, summer uses August as its last chance to dazzle us with the bounty of summer produce. All of our favorite berries are in at the markets and we have been making Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Macerated Berries and Blueberry Lattice Pie with reckless abandon.

Also in Season: tomatoes, peaches, melons, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries (second crop), beans and summer squash.