Tag Parties That Cook Chicago

Parties That Cook’s Chicago Team Treat: An Evening at Girl & the Goat

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining Tagged with , , , , , September 21st, 2011 @ 12:01 pm

This blog is brought to you by Parties That Cook’s Chicago team! In lieu of Chicago’s traditional cookbook club this quarter, PTC lead chef David Avila recently hosted fellow PTC chefs Heidi, Molly and Brandy at Chicago’s hottest restaurant: Girl & the Goat. David runs the restaurant’s prep kitchen five days a week, so he treated the girls to an evening of delicious food and offered nuggets of insider information about the history and creation of each dish.

David said the Girl & the Goat team does all their own pickling – and a lot of it! He has even been out to the local farms, such as Slagel Family Farms, where Girl & The Goat sources meat and produce from. Sounds like the definition of farm-to-table dining.

After delivering a bottle of vodka and bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to the kitchen chefs, Heidi, Molly and Brandy sat and sipped cocktails. They then enjoyed two delicious breads made just for them: A hearty pretzel bread with a perfectly crunchy crust paired with a horseradish butter and a “corny” corn bread with a sweet and spicy corn relish. One of the restaurant’s owners stopped by their table and gave them the scoop on “Top Chef” winner Stephanie Izard’s new retro-inspired diner opening this fall, “The Little Goat”. Talk about getting the VIP treatment!

Then the food started coming.

Of course, Heidi, Molly and Brandy let David order for them. They nibbled on bites of pretty much everything. First up was the Roasted Cauliflower with pickled peppers, pine nuts, and mint. Yum! The girls also got a taste of the Grilled Edamame with smoky blue cheese and rosemary. The consensus was that the smoky blue cheese melted over the edamame put it over the top in the best way. The Squash Blossom Rangoon with crab, chive yogurt and toasted almonds was delish, as was the Chickpea Fritters with eggplant-tomatillo caponata and mozzarella. The texture of the fritters was amazing and the fact that they sat on top of a bed of mozzarella made the dish that much better!

The Seared Tuna came up next – served with a delicious crumbled lamb sausage, grilled blueberries and pepitas. Yes, I said grilled blueberries! David explained that the grilling is done by putting a cooling rack on a hot grill and then “spilling” the blueberries on the rack. This was Heidi’s favorite dish of the night, while Brandy’s favorite was the Kalbi style beef ribs. She further explained, “It melted in my mouth and was served over the cutest corn coblettes and topped with charred okra.” There was more, including some oysters that were to-die-for, but if you couldn’t guess by the photos, it’s time to move on to desserts.

The group ordered all four desserts offered that night. They enjoyed the Chocolate Bouchon with a foie fluff and the Brown Sugar Cake with goat cheese mousse of the most perfect texture, but the highlight hands down was the Pork Fat Doughnuts with house-made honey yogurt and lemony eggplant. While eating, Molly shared the tale of a former job where she had to serve homemade donuts from a machine every night. Though she would normally curse a doughnut, she scraped the plate on this one.

All in all, it was an amazing experience and Heidi, Molly and Brandy thank David and the staff at Girl & the Goat for a wonderful night.

I’d like to thank Heidi, Molly and Brandy for a wonderful blog!

Parties That Cook’s Chicago Team Cookbook Club: Chicago Cooks: 25 Years of Chicago Culinary History

1 comment By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining, General, Menus & Recipes, News & Events Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , March 29th, 2011 @ 12:09 pm

The Parties That Cook Blog has seen some wonderful guest posts in the past. We’re going to keep the tradition going with a recap of the most recent cookbook club meeting from our Chicago office! This installment of our Chicago Team’s Cookbook Club is brought to you by Chefs Heidi, Brandy, Liz and Molly. Thanks ladies!

After having to reschedule our book club due to the great snow storm of 2011 that hit Chicago a few weeks back, the PTC girls gathered at Brandy’s house. We were all very excited to review the book, Chicago Cooks: 25 Years of Chicago Culinary History and Great Recipes from Les Dames d’Escoffier. Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was quickly deflated.

We started with Heidi’s choice for the first course: Spicy Crab and Shrimp Rolls with Salsa. This was probably the best recipe that we reviewed because it was fairly easy and the flavors were quite good (paprika, saffron, cayenne and cumin). We often wondered if the recipes had been tested because the cooking times were incorrect on several recipes.  It took longer to cook these than the recipe indicated. Heidi also suggested doubling the cooking liquid and reserving it for dipping the rolls which would have been much better than a jarred salsa.

For our entrée, Brandy made Hickory Smoked Bacon Wrapped Rainbow Trout. This was a very simple recipe. The whole fish was stuffed with rosemary and wrapped in bacon. It was difficult to serve, but thanks to Molly and Brandy’s fabulous filleting abilities, we managed to plate it up. This is definitely not the recipe to serve when you want a beautiful presentation. We all agreed that it may have been easier to fillet the fish before cooking and wrapping each individual piece with bacon.

Alongside the fish, we served Liz’s Onion Flan. This recipe was completely off on yields and cooking times. Aside from that, it was your basic egg custard dish – similar to a quiche.


For dessert, Molly, our resident pastry Chef, made a decadent Chocolate Hazelnut Cake. We were all very impressed when Molly unveiled her cakes. They were worthy of sitting on the shelves of the finest bakeries in town. Molly later confessed that she dolled up the cakes that otherwise would have looked like hockey pucks (literally). She added a lovely Raspberry Buttercream, Raspberry Sauce, fresh Raspberries and a chocolate disc that she brought back from her recent trip to Switzerland. The cake recipe from the book was good, but Molly’s additions elevated it to 5 star restaurant quality! It was a decadent but surprisingly light dessert. To quote some of the girls, “It didn’t feel like a gut bomb”.

I think we all agreed that this Chicago Cooks book didn’t “cook” up enough interest to merit a purchase. Though not every cookbook reviewed is a success, this doesn’t stop us from wanting to try more in the future! Look out for the next guest post of Parties That Cook’s Chicago Cookbook Club! For more ideas on cooking parties in Chicago, or for hands-on cooking classes in Chicago, you know Parties That Cook is your go-to company!