I had always fancied taking one of the cooking classes at the Chopping Block and this week I got my chance when the Chicago Food Blogger group met up there for a social event organized by Mike at http://chicagofoodbloggers.com/.

It was also a great chance to put faces to some of the writers and bloggers posting in the Chicago area. The Chopping Block had set up three stations where we could choose to work on one of three dishes; “Roasted Poblano and Black Bean Quesadillas”, “Thai Meatballs with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce” or “Brownies with Peanut Butter Frosting”

I found myself on the Meatball station which was fine with me, it was basically a lot of chopping and mixing of meat with herbs, and a lot of rolling out of pork mince into small bite sized meat balls. Our chef took us through the basic knife work needed to chop up the different herbs and ingredients, and then I just went free style and chopped it all up really small.

   

The Meatball Recipe

and how to make it

It was a pretty basic and simple meatball to make, but to be fair it tasted quite nice and went well with the beer and wine that we were drinking during the event. We did also get to try all the other dishes that the two other groups had made as well.

I rather liked the Roasted Poblano and Black Bean Quesadillas,

I had several of them, just in the interests of quality control you understand.

The Peanut Butter covered Chocolate Brownies were very sweet but very nice as well. I don’t think I could have eaten to much of these treats but they seemed to go down well with the other bloggers in the class.

The Chopping Block instructors were very good and quite patient with us all and kept us to time despite the multitude of people trying to take picture of the food and the class.  This particular class was at their Merchandise Mart site, and they have a second site up in Lincoln Square which is a bit smaller but just as good.

It was really good as well to meet up with some of the food bloggers of Chicago, and I should say a thanks to Mike Kostyo for organizing the event and for providing some of the photos for this post as well. His are much better than mine.