WFTV, Orlando, April 2007 (video)
Chicago Tribune, The Stew, June 13, 2007
Today's Chicago Woman (pdf)
Chicago Home and Garden
Chicago Tribune (pdf)
Metromix - September 2005 (pdf)
Chicago Sun Times - September 2005 (pdf)
Time Out - September 2005 (pdf)
CS - Chicago Social Magazine
Cooking Light
Crains Chicago Business
Chicago Reader
New Store Announcement - December 2002
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Shelley Young at The Great American Pie Festival |
"Craig Sindelar, head sommelier of Alinea restaurant, shared tips on enjoying wine Monday during a class dubbed “Sommelier Secrets,” at the Chopping Block Cooking School. Sindelar offered the disclaimer that the tips were not necessarily “secrets” but ideas behind service, then proceeded to share great tips, secret or not...."
Click here for the full article.
Wine & Dine - You Don't Know SQUASH
Lisa Futterman
September 2006
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| Squash coming in many sizes, shapes, colors and textures, represents the bridge between warmer and cooler seasons. Tender and delicate, summer squashes join the rest of the late summer harvest in a vegetable celebration, while the harder and heartier winter squashes call for the richer, deeper flavors of autumn. |
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| Cubes of butternut squash, added just at the end of the cooking time, provide flavor, nutrients, and authenticity to a carefully made risotto. The simmering stock, added gradually as the rice absorbs it, gives a rich depth of taste. |
To many home cooks, the mighty squash appears daunting, with its tough exterior and rock-hard flesh. To others with memories of bland baked squash and pallid purees, squash seems humble, and unworthy of their attention. But knowledge is power, and if you don't know squash, Shelley Young, founder of the Chopping Block School, can teach you of its ways. "Squash is the most forgiving and versatile of all vegetables. I have a butternut squash at my house right now."
Both summer and winter squashes are technically defined as gourds, fleshy vegetables with thick rinds and a seed-filled center. They are also directly related to cucumbers and melons. Summer squashes, like zucchini, yellow squash, and baby patty pans, are actually harvested immature, when their skins and seeds are edible and their flesh is still quite tender, and should be eaten within several days of purchase. Winter squashes (acorns, pumpkins, hubbards, and kabochas, for example) are allowed to fully mature to their tough-rinded, firm fleshed adulthood, which allows them to be stored much longer (up to 3 months at cool room temperature).
When shopping for summer squash, smaller is better, and they are at their most delicious and plentiful from the months of May to September. At farmers markets, you may be lucky enough to find zucchini still wearing their baby fuzz, an indication that they are freshly picked. But regardless of where you find them, choose the smallest, firmest, and most evenly toned squash for the best flavor and texture. Winter squash are best from October to April, and should be selected for their solid, weighty feel and an unblemished rind without soft spots.
No need to peel summer squash, as their skin is young and tender. In fact, the skin provides a nice contrast to the soft texture and pale color of cooked squash. Summer squash can be grilled in thick slices (use a marinade as a dressing for the warm squash post-cooking), and piled on a platter of assorted summer veggies. Steaming or quick sauteing serves as a more delicate cooking method for summer squash, allowing their gentle sweetness to show through. Chunky sticks of zucchini can also stand up to battering or breading and a trip to the deep fryer, as in Japanese tempura or Italian-American parmigiana.
Summer squashes partner well with their late summer vegetable brethren-peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant all have a natural affinity with zucchini and yellow squash. "When summer squash, especially zucchini, is at its peak, I'll make carpaccio by taking a good vegetable peeler and slicing it paper thin, then sprinkling it with olive oil, salt, and herbs," suggests Shelley.
Winter squashes can be a challenge to peel and cut, but there are ways to simplify the process. Whenever possible, cook the squash with the peel on-it is much easier to remove the peel when cooked, plus the skin can protect the squash from getting soggy or scorched while cooking. It is also wise to cook winter squashes whole, or at least in large chunks, as the flesh will be less difficult to cut later when softened by roasting or steaming. One of Shelley's best tips is to place the whole squash in the microwave "just for 2-5 minutes to soften the skin. My Mom taught me that," she recalls. When cutting raw winter squash, always use your heaviest knife, its weight will do the work for you. Work away from yourself and toward the cutting board for efficiency and safety, and try to use or create a flat side on the vegetable against the cutting board so it is not rocking and tipping dangerously. If you must peel the squash raw, use a heavy-duty vegetable peeler or knife, working toward the cutting board. Cut the squash into smaller pieces to expose the hard-to-peel nooks.
Winter squashes need lengthy or moist cooking to soften their flesh, and sometimes a combination of both. Steaming works well when the squash is going to be used in a delicate puree, because it breaks down the tough texture without changing or adding flavor. Herbs, spices, and butter or cream may then be added to the mashed flesh. Baking works well for squashes that are going to be stuffed or served in large pieces. Wedges or halves of acorn squash, for example, can be seasoned with salt, pepper, and olive oil or pure maple syrup and baked with the skin on until tender for a simple but handsome accompaniment to autumn dinners. "I love to serve roasted squash with roast pork," Shelley says. "You already have the oven on, and the sweet flavor compliments the naturally sweet meat."
If you are planning to stuff a squash (or perhaps to serve pumpkin soup inside an actual baby pumpkin) you must bake it first with a little bit of liquid inside (a sort of steam-baking technique)-and be sure to season them before stuffing with a pre-cooked stuffing of sausage-studded rice or bread before baking again.
Roasting is an excellent treatment for winter squash, as we recommend for the butternut squash risotto recipe on page 28. Roasting (which is a dry oven cooking method at a higher temperature than baking) promotes flavorful caramelization by coaxing the ripe squash's natural sugars to the surface where they bubble and brown. Shelley splits the squash lengthwise (by cutting downwards toward the wide end), and places it flesh side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet that she has sprinkled with sea salt, pepper, and olive oil. "Seasoning the sheet pan instead of the squash allows the seasonings to adhere to the squash better," she notes. Place in a 400 degree oven until tender when pierced with a small knife. When cool, remove the peel with a knife or your fingers, or just scoop it out with a large spoon. Chunks of this sweet roasted squash can be tossed into pasta, layered into lasagna, mashed into a side dish, or used in risotto.
Butternut Squash Risotto
Serves 8 as a first course, 4 as a main course
2 tablespoons butter or extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup Arborio rice
1⁄2 cup white wine
4-6 cups chicken or vegetable stock, heated
1 1⁄2 pounds butternut squash, halved, roasted until tender, peeled and diced
1⁄2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon fresh savory or sage, chopped
1. In a large saute pan, heat the butter or olive oil and add the onion, sauteing until translucent. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more. Season with salt and pepper, add the rice and saute for 1 minute, then add the wine and stir over medium heat until the liquid has evaporated.
2. Add the warm stock 1⁄2 cup at a time, stirring constantly after each addition, adding the next ladleful only after the previous one is completely absorbed. Continue until the rice is al dente, about 18 minutes. Stir in the squash, cheese and savory or sage, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve at once.
Shelley recommends using an enameled cast iron pan such as Le Creuset for risotto. She explains, "It prevents sticking and offers consistent heat, plus the heavy lid keeps the risotto warm, which gives you lots of leeway as you are trying to pull dinner together."
ULTIMATE CULINARY PRIMER
From hands-on, down-and-dirty work to instruction
that's more demonstrative, the chefs at The Chopping Block
will work with the bride to suit whatever level of involvement she
and her guests are up to. And whatever cuisine they might be craving:
An array of six international menu suggestions includes the French
Bistro Menu, a symphony of caramelized onion and bleu cheese tart,
steak au poivre, garlic mashed potatoes and creme brulee. The 'Appetizer
Adventure Menu,' the 'Homemade Pasta Menu' and the Thai Menu' are
also favorites. While most people prefer to stick to a tried-and-true
program, the chefs are willing to work with party hosts to customize
a menu for the evening (Gourmet magazine recently hosted a party here
at which the guests were taught how to prepare recipes from the magazine).
The cooking fetes last three hours, including a two-hour lesson and
an hour for socializing, eating and gift-giving. And if the cooking
thing just doesn't appeal to you, ask about the Chopping Block's wine
tastings.
WHAT IT WILL COST YOU
A $200 set-up
fee (which covers planning, prep and purchasing* of food), $125-per-hour
for staffing and building rental and $20 to $35 per plate, depending
on the menu. Coffee and tea come with all meals. Alcohol is not provided,
but party bosts are welcome to bring their own and have the staff
arrange it on a buffet table with glasses. The wine-tasting party
can be arranged for the same $200 set-up and $125 hourly staffing
and building rental fees, plus $24-30 per person for five wines and
light appetizers.
LOCATION
1324 W. Webster St. Accommodates 5 to 35 people
RESERVATIONS
Contact Director Lisa Futterman at 773.472.6700.
Book two months in advance for a week night or one month in advance
for a weekend evening party.
(reprint - Chicago Social Magazine Jan/Feb 2001)
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Chicago ... When summer comes to the shores of Lake Michigan, you should, too.
Best
Treats for Gourmets Even if you don't sign up for classes
to learn knife skills or how to roll your own sushi, you'll love
shopping at the Chopping Block (1324 W. Webster Ave., 773-472-6700).
The former Lincoln Park home that houses the shop retails a range
of unique housewares and quality kitchen tools. And though you can't
buy any namesake cookware at the slick new Calphalon Culinary Center
(1000 W. Washington St., 312-529-0100), you can practice everything
from making basic stock to throwing a paella party.
By Elaine Glusac (reprint Cooking Light Magazine)
Kitchen comfort: Shelley Young, owner
of Lincoln Park cooking school THE CHOPPING BLOCK, has seen enrollment
rise since THE terrorist attacks. "After Sept. 11, a lot of
people just wanted to be in this environment."
Demand exceeds staff
Demand has increased for both classroom-style demonstration and hands-on classes at THE CHOPPING BLOCK, a five-year-old Lincoln Park cooking school. THE small school, which also has a retail cookware business, offers two or three classes per day and is still turning students away, in part because owner and instructor Shelley Young can't hire qualified teachers fast enough.
"It's a matter of being able to train instructors," says Ms. Young, who currently has one full-time employee and six part-time instructors. "As we get staff, we add classes. But most instructors take about six months to train, depending on their ability."
THE CHOPPING BLOCK limits class size to 15, so each student receives one-on-one attention from THE chef. Ms. Young recently raised her prices — to $50 from $40 for a demonstration class and to $75 from $65 for a hands-on class — and still THE courses fill quickly. Subjects range from heirloom recipes to knife skills.
"After Sept. 11, a lot of people just wanted to be in this environment," she says. "It's a place to gather and talk."
For shop and restaurant owners, having THE
cushion of extra income from cooking classes helps weather a slow
economy and higher prices for ingredients.
(reprint Crains Chicago Business, May
13, 2002)
O U R T O W N Cuisine Art
Chef
Lisa Futterman is not accustomed to doing one thing at a time. It's
Saturday morning at the Chopping Block, the Lincoln Park culinary
shop where she teaches. As the students in her Rustic Italian class
wander in (mostly young women, with a few husbands in tow), she
peels and deveins a pile of shrimp, measures butter into a small
white bowl, washes a stack of celery, and sucks down a spare peach,
talking the whole time.
"I have a seat for you right up front," she says to a
latecomer. "I love to be interrupted. Italy stories, baseball
stories, I don't care." She's slicing the shrimp lengthwise,
slipping her knife through their wet curls without looking. The
store's open kitchen, tucked tidily into a back corner, is designed
for demonstrations, and she moves easily from stove to sink to wide
wooden countertop. Everyone sits up straight, eyes on her hands.
"Does anyone have any questions about anything a-tall? No?
Then let's talk seafood."
"Are you going to give us recipes?" a woman asks hopefully,
pen at the ready.
"I am not," Futterman says. "I'm gonna talk, and
you're gonna write."
Futterman teaches her students to cook, but first she teaches them
to eat. She wants people to be led by their senses, to decide what
to cook based on the ingredients at the farmers' market today, not
the recipe chosen a week ago. Mostly, she wants to get her students
to trust themselves. "People are too tied to cooking time,
so what they do is, if the recipe says 30 minutes, they take it
out in 30 minutes, even if it's not done. I teach them how to tell
if it's done."
Before moving to Chicago in 1998, Futterman worked as a pastry chef
at several restaurants in California, including San Francisco's
Tisane. She quit the restaurant business to teach once she realized
that even more than cooking she loved getting other people to cook.
She's not impatient with the can-barely-boil-water crowd, either. "We see people like that all the time, and they come back and
say, 'I made the whole menu and it's amazing and my husband loves
me more.'" Futterman directs the cooking program at the Chopping
Block and along with store owner Shelley Young and several other
chefs leads two-hour, one-session classes ranging from Chicken 101
to the monumentally popular Knife Skills.
Whatever the class, she puts on a good show. It's a warm morning,
but no one drowses. She is loud, she is fast, and every sentence
sounds like a promise: "Mussels are alive when you buy them.
And you will kill them.
"Now! We are going to cook each of our seafoods sep-arate-ly."
The shrimp and the mussels, it turns out, are destined for a seafood
salad. Futterman retrieves some salmon from the refrigerator, tucks
it into a red enamel baking dish, and spills white wine over it.
A warning occurs to her. "When this is done, do not--do not--save
the wine the fish poached in. Some people think, 'Oh, it's flavorful!
It's like fish stock!'" She shakes her head. "It's really
gross."
Once the seafood has been dispatched, Futterman rinses her knife
and turns her attention to the celery. "So," she says,
"I'm nicely dicing the celery into nice little squares. I'm
not cutting a whole bunch of it at one time." She rocks her
blade lightly back and forth, and a tumble of tidy green cubes appears.
She barely looks down.
"All right. How about some roasted peppers? It's fine to buy
roasted peppers in a jar, as long as you buy good roasted peppers
in a jar, which are 20 percent off this month at the Chopping Block."
She smiles and fishes one out. "Now, these are in brine--no!
They're not in brine! They're in their own juices. You can buy them
in brine and they taste all pickley. These taste nice and sweet
and roasted peppery. I think I'll use a red and a yellow. For prettiness."
The finished salad is, in fact, very pretty. It looks like demure
confetti. Futterman drips in a little olive oil and cautions, "We
may need more. We may need more lemon juice. We're gonna see! We're
gonna taste!" Not yet, though. It's time to start dessert,
an Italian baked peach affair.
If you had no knowledge of Italy except what you learned from listening
to Futterman, you'd think it was a cross between the Garden of Eden
and Mount Olympus. When she talks about Italian cooking her sentences
take on extra punctuation. "In Italy, the desserts are. Very.
Simple. Desserts after dinner are usually simple and based on fruit.
One evening in Tuscany, they served us a bowl of cherries in ice
water."
She starts halving peaches smoothly. "Let's use six--no, I
ate one for breakfast, so I'm off. Let's use four. I also couldn't
resist, when I was at Stanley's this morning--" She holds up
a dark, full fruit by its stem. "Figs! The Italians love figs
like nobody else." After the figs join the peaches in a pie
plate, she rustles around for a minute and pulls out some brown
sugar. "And when I use brown sugar I use dark brown sugar.
And the leftover stuff?" She sweeps a few crumbs from the counter
into her palm and sprinkles them over the ripe fruit, already shining
with amaretto. "Use it all. Come on."
The dessert is in the oven, and now it's time for the entree: individual
lasagnas. A sensitive subject, however, has arisen. Futterman doesn't
actually close her eyes and rock back and forth in remembered pain,
but she looks like she might. "Whenever you cook pasta it should
be in. Rapidly boiling. Salted. Water. Salt the water, salt the
water, salt the water, salt the water, salt the water, salt the
water."
Someone always has to ask: How long should you cook pasta?
"We will cook it until it's done," she says. "I know
you hate that answer."
Author: Anne Ford
(reprint The Chicago Reader October 4, 2002)
The Chopping
Block to Open A Second Location
Chicago’s Favorite Cooking School Expands into Lincoln Square
Chicago, IL (December 2002) - The Chopping Block, Chicago's acclaimed
cooking school and retail store, announces plans to open a second
location in the thriving Lincoln Square neighborhood in Spring/Summer
2003. Like the original, the new store will combine an intimate cooking
school within a gourmet retail shop.
"We just celebrated our fifth anniversary at The Chopping Block,
and over the years have built an enthusiastic following of cooking
students with diverse skills and interests," said owner Shelley
Young. "Right now, waiting lists for classes are about three
times greater than our capacity, so we really need to expand in order
to accommodate our students. We'll be able to increase the number
of Hands-On classes and intensive courses that we offer." The
Lincoln Square school will feature a Totally Hands-On classroom in
addition to a demonstration kitchen, retaining the Chopping Block's
signature small class size and focus on individual attention and interaction.
"Rather than move the school into a larger space and lose the
intimacy we know helps students become comfortable in the kitchen,
we decided to open an additional location that will have the same
feel for which The Chopping Block is known," Young said. The
new location will also feature a wine school, offering an expanded
schedule of wine classes and wine available for purchase. The store
will continue to offer the ethnic ingredients, professional baking
supplies and quality cookware that customer have come to expect from
The Chopping Block.
The Lincoln Square
Chopping Block also will be able to accommodate larger private parties
as well as private events during the week. "Our private event
customers are currently greatly underserved," said Young. "Finding
a location that could retain the same feel as our Lincoln Park school
and yet offer larger capacity and better flexibility in scheduling
for private events has been a primary focus. We are looking forward
to growing into a larger space in Lincoln Square."
The Chopping Block's unique, welcoming feel is a perfect fit in
the heart of Lincoln Square’s shopping district. "Easy
parking and access to public transit were important reasons we chose
to expand to this emerging area for small business," said Young,
"and we are thrilled to launch this new phase of the Chopping
Block on Lincoln Ave.
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