blue ribbon cooking school

last night i went to blue ribbon cooking school with another publisher for an event. blue ribbon cooking school is a place you can go with groups to cook dinner together with a chef that leads you. it's nice because they have everything pre-measured (and in some cases, pre boiled) so it's really easy to throw together...especially when you're holding a glass of wine in the other hand :)

i've been to blue ribbon a few times and i always have a great time! well obviously...food and bevies? need we say more.

on the menu last night were some pear proscuitto blue cheese and arugula slices and rosemary skewered shrimp for our appetizers. those were already pre-made and waiting for us when we arrived. they also had the most delicious pitcher of lavender lemonde. give it a shot sometime--you won't regret it.

we headed to our kitchen after snacking a little and got to work. i was a big nerd and took pictures of the whole cooking process :)

jess and ben here are making the cabernet sauce for our flat iron steaks! she's pouring chicken broth into a mixture and he's chopping up some shallots.


next, blake and griffin had to rub down the flat iron with a creole seasoning and olive oil so it could marinate for a while.




now blake and steph are chopping up vegetables to roast! we had tomatoes, fennel, kalamata olives and onion with salt, pepper and olive oil drizzled on top.

the veggies before they went onto the sheet to roast!

this next part was probably my favorite: truffle mashed potatoes!! we used a ricer to mash up the potatoes. i'd never used one before but it was really cool. the chef taught us the key to making fluffy mashed potatoes--you put the potatoes (yukon) into a pot of cold water, bring it to a boil, then let it simmer ~25 minutes. trust me, they were incredibly light tasting.

generous portions of truffle oil were applied pre-baking and post!

now it was time to work on dessert--chocolate liquid cake! the chef is pouring the chocolate into the whisked eggs after it sat out for a little bit so that we wouldn't make scrambled eggs ;)

finally it's time to eat! blake has had one too many beers and is holding his nut-free salad so we won't have to epipen him :)

our salad of spinach, cranberries and toasted hazelnuts with a delicious vinagrette

the truffled mashed potatoes! i tried to make a gamespot logo...haha


the entire meal! plated very nicely by our chef :) the flat iron was sooo good!


the desert! it was garnished with mint and a blackberry sauce which was fantastic. however she overbaked the cake just a teeny bit so it wasn't very liquidy. oh well, it still tasted amazing!