The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club…
…unless it’s a different kind of Fight Club…a Culinary Fight Club.

25 champions from 14 cities came together this past Sunday to compete in the 2019 Annual Culinary Fight Club Championship in Chicago.

Culinary Fight Club is a national organization that hosts live cooking competitions. Attendees watch while three teams race for 45 seconds to choose 15 ingredients from the ‘pantry’. Teams then have 60 minutes to create a dish that represents their take on the theme. Attendees and judges vote and choose a winning dish and a Culinary Fight Club champion is named. These 25 champions came out strong this past Sunday.

From home cooks to executive chefs, competitors highlighted different cultures, ingredients, and cooking techniques – all tempting the taste buds of ticket holders and judges. And let me tell you…it was delicious!

This was the first time I attended a Culinary Fight Club event and it will not be my last. As the season culminating event, this Fight Club took on a bit of a different format. The event started with the Culinary Fight Fest (CFF). The goal of the CFF was for attendees to taste all the bites the chefs had to offer in an effort to pick the top four favorites. For three hours my husband, myself and a few other friends, ate and drank our way through 25 different bite-size masterpieces while chefs described their dish, their cooking background, and what made their culinary heart tick. At the end of the three hours, the CFF concluded, tasting stopped, and ballots were cast. The four winning bites of the Culinary Fight Fest were announced, and these chefs advanced on to The Final Plate, the crowning competition of the night…

Best Bite Wins…
First Place: Kris Schoenberger (BBQ’d Productions Bar and Grill, Third Lake, IL) – Kansas City Wagyu Surf n’ Turf Slider
Second Place: Chris Allen (City Winery Restaurant, Nashville, TN) – Boston Scallop and Shrimp Aglio E Olio with Pancetta and Yukon Puree
Tied for Third/Fourth: Cory Hinton (Private Chef, Chattanooga, TN) – Romance of Eden, an elevated Shrimp Po’ Boy
Tied for Third/Fourth: Jamie Bisioulis (Private Chef, Glenview, IL) – Chicken Kiev Croquette with Candied Pork Belly

Pumped with a Best Bite win under their belt Kris, Chris, Cory and Jamie proceeded to the 45-minute quick fire challenge in the style of “Chopped” – creating one final dish for the judges to critique. It was an intense 45 minutes of concepting, creating, and plating while the audience watched and the clock ticked down. The buzzer rang and the cooking stopped.

All four chefs did a stellar job pulling together their dishes, but only one chef could prevail. The 2019 Culinary Fight Club Champion title was awarded to Kris Schoenberger. Chef Schoenberger was definitely a crowd favorite with his emotion (tears were shed), passion, and love for food and how it brings people together. This was his third year competing and advancing to The Final Plate Championship and his first win. He said “Three is my lucky number,” and I would say ‘Third time’s a charm’ definitely holds true for Kris.

To learn more about upcoming Culinary Fight Club events check them out here. You can also learn about the great way they are giving back by partnering with Fight2Feed, a non-profit organization with the mission to eliminate hunger in Chicago by utilizing leftovers from restaurants and food trucks.

In honor of the 2019 champion, Kris Schoenberger, here is my own spin on a Surf n’ Turf Slider.

When I was a kid growing up in northern Wisconsin, every spring I watched my parents carefully planting our vegetable garden with even rows of seeds going into the freshly tilled soil. It was great to see the plants pop to life and mature. We always had an assortment of vegetables…string beans, peppers, lettuce.  But my mother’s pride were her tomatoes.  I still remember how we watched with anticipation as they grew larger and turned bright red.  I also remember heading to the garden to pick one, rinse it quickly under the outdoor faucet and eat it out of hand, still warm from the sun…succulent, sweet and juicy.

That brief window from early August to early September gives a bounty of tomatoes, and no other tomato comes close to those fresh from the garden or farmer’s market.  Once the season is over they are a fond memory.

This is the perfect time to enjoy a simply prepared and fresh Caprese Salad.  The best ingredients to adorn those beautiful tomatoes include fresh basil and basil pesto, fresh mozzarella, the best quality olive oil, a drizzle of balsamic and a flourish of flaky Maldon sea salt.

It is peach season, indeed.  Everywhere you look, peaches and stone fruits are spilling from bins and stacked shoulder high in crates.  Nectarines, plums, pluots, plumcots – juicy, ripe and swoon-worthy.  Unless, of course, they’re not.  There’s nothing worse than choosing a fragrant peach and biting in to discover mealy mushy yuck.  How is a girl (or guy) to know which peach is good and which needs to be composted??

Don’t go for size, unless the fruit has been tree-ripened.  Often, especially at major grocery markets, the larger fruits get mealy before they have time to fully ripen. Check the weight. The heavier a fruit is for its size, the more juice it contains.  A large fruit that seems surprisingly light is past its prime. Lastly, breathe deeply.  A fruit that smells like nothing will taste like nothing.

It’s a crazy position for a chef, I know, but when fruit is perfect, I’d rather eat it as-is than cook it.  Slice up perfectly ripened peaches, nectarines, and plums, pit and slice a few cherries and toss them on top of bitter greens like arugula or radicchio.  Crumble over some fabulous Marché Bleu d’ Auvergne or Feta cheese, add some warm sliced grilled steak or chicken and call it dinner!

If you have an over-abundance of lovely peaches or nectarines, try this wonderful, French style peach cake that bakes with its own sugar crust.  It’s lovely for breakfast or brunch, or topped with ice cream for dessert.  Now, go eat a peach!

A few months ago, I experienced great culinary inspiration in a teeny tiny shop in Nazareth, Israel. I was beckoned by the enticing scent of spices before I even recognized the shop’s entrance. Following the scent, I found a small wooden door with stone steps leading me to the shop below street level. Once inside, the inspiration began. Big sacks of spices covered the entrance. Large bins of spices were displayed side by side on tables throughout the remaining square footage. Some spices were names found in my own kitchen: varieties of cumin, paprika, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Others were less familiar to me…sumac, saffron, and spice blends like za’tar and Baharat. There were many I had never cooked with like amber, whole cardamon pods, and turmeric. I also discovered enticing teas, a large variety of salts from regions in the Middle East and Mediterranean, and an overwhelming variety of peppercorns too.

I came home with almost all of the spices listed above, and I began trying to cook with my new spices even before unpacking from my 10-day trip. In less than an hour of walking through my front door, I had fragrant saffron rice steaming on my stove while I also enjoyed a new cup of herbal tea. A day later, I had recreated a salad recipe that I had tasted on the trip. Since then, I have had fun in my kitchen creating the flavors of the Holy land: Beef and Lamb Meatballs in Tahini Sauce featuring cumin, lentil and rice with turmeric, Bethlehem hummus (not yet mastered) garnished with sumac, persimmon and fennel salad with black Mediterranean sea salt, and Shakshuka with cumin and paprika. I hope to bring these flavors to a Marcel’s class later this year entitled “Taste of the Holy Land”. Look for it on the 4th quarter calendar! In the meantime, I do have some of these recipes already posted on my website. Please check it out!

Today I am sharing one of my new favorites: Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Dip. I serve it with lightly toasted pita bread cut into triangles for easy dipping. Enjoy!

I was in search of a recipe the other day: something seasonal, fresh, inspirational. A struggle! We may have sprung forward on the clock, but in the market, we are in limbo. It’s the time of year when you can’t bear to roast another squash, and we wait for the soil to make way for the sprouts pushing their shoots up from below.

It’s the time of year when you’re not sure which coat to wear; has wool’s time passed? Can I take the snow brush out of my car? Is it too early to trade out the snow blower for the lawn mower? On Monday it’s 33 degrees and sleeting, by Wednesday, it’s 60 and sunny, and by Friday it’s gloomy and 38 again. Ah the Midwest!

The seasonal changes come at us in runners’ distances. Fall is a short 5K into winter and winter is a long grueling, 13.1-week half-marathon. Spring jogs a nice paced 10k into summer and summer is a wind sprint until the whole race starts all over again. We clutch the seasons and the farm bounty they yield.

As summer nears to a close, we spend weekends in the hot sun picking berries for freezing; we simmer peaches gently into jam. We pickle, we preserve, we eat too many tomatoes, all in hopes of hanging on to summer. By fall, we start snatching apples off the orchard’s trees; we harvest fall squash in too many varieties to count. We wear socks again.

By winter, we bundle up. It takes longer to get ready to go outside than the time we are actually outside, we roast brussels sprouts by the dozens, and include pumpkin in everything from coffee to desserts. We long braise pot roasts and Dutch oven day-long stews.

By mid to late March, the daylight is longer, the sun a little bit warmer. Stalks of tender asparagus, early spring peas, the sweet juice of the first strawberries, and the tart in red rhubarb are on our minds, not yet our plates. It’s funny that this time of year is Spring Break. We don’t need a break from spring, we need a break from winter as we long for spring!

There is one bright spot in winter, citrus. Mother Nature’s reward to dark and gloomy are the sunny globes of sweetness. Spicy, red-fleshed blood oranges, “eating orange” navels, ruby-red Cara Cara, best juice making Valencia, and the lemon and tangerine hybrid, Meyer Lemons are all seasonal during the coldest months of the year.

We think nothing of saving other seasons as they rush to their finale; blueberry jam, garden-fresh sauce, applesauce, pureed squash, why not save a bit of sunshine so rare to winter. Orange marmalade is bright, fresh and almost sunny when sitting on a shelf or in the refrigerator.

The most classic of all marmalades is made from bitter Seville oranges, a bit harder to come by than other varieties. I prefer to make mine with a mix of orange varieties and toss a couple of lemons in for good pucker.

What to do with this delightful batch of marmalade? Winter’s jam is more than just a slather on toast. Paired with golden honey, dried fruits, mustards, charcuterie and tangy blue, marmalade finishes a cheese board with the perfect combination of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. A feast for the senses!

Jazz up your yogurt, swirl into oatmeal, bake it with brie. Add a splash to your pan sauce for chicken, add a spoonful to vinaigrette. Top your pancakes or waffles, stuff French toast. Melt it into a glaze for your Easter ham, spread a thin layer in a crepe, or dollop a spoonful on panna cotta.

Personally, I love marmalade on a grilled cheese. Buttery sourdough grilled just enough to crisp the exterior, melt the cheese, and warm the spread yielding the perfect ooze when pulled apart or sliced in half.

As we take our break from winter and anticipate spring, capture orange goodness. This recipe yields enough for you to enjoy and enough share. Spread a jar of sunshine.

You can marmalade quickly, and just as tasty in the pressure cooker or instant pot. Here are recipes for both cooking methods:

 My first attempt at making Focaccia di Recco was a colossal disaster. And it wasn’t because I used sugar instead of salt, or set the oven to broil instead of bake (yes, I’ve done both).  No, this disaster was 100% because of a pan. More specifically, my favorite pizza pan with the little holes on the bottom.

After mixing all of the ingredients together and rolling out the dough, I popped my masterpiece into the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. Halfway through, I opened the door to spin the pan when a waft of thick smoke sailed from the oven and straight to the smoke alarm. After quickly slamming the oven door and crazily fanning the alarm with a dish towel, I decided to take my chances and just wait out the remaining 15 minutes. Unfortunately, my focaccia was not having it. The smoke was now seeping out of my CLOSED oven door.  

Opening the door again, I was blasted with a full-on bellow of smoke so thick that I couldn’t even see across the room. And right on cue, my trusty smoke alarm began blaring it’s familiar song. Turns out I had nicked the bottom of the dough and created a cheese “escape-hatch” through (you guessed it) those little holes in my pan. I was left with an empty shell of a crust and 8 oz. of cheese on the bottom of my oven. I shut off the oven and ordered take-out.

As they say, if you don’t succeed, try try again.

Recipe Card

In any profession there is continuing education. Sometimes it is required, other times it is inspired. Inspiration to learn something…just because. I often have these moments of inspiration in the kitchen. Sometimes I immerse myself in a unique cuisine or an underutilized ingredient. But I recently had a very unexpected inspiration to educate myself. There were a couple interactions that inspired me…

My husband came home from work a few weeks ago and told me about a colleague who has been replacing his meals with a nutritionally packed drink instead of food. Soylent. Have you heard of this stuff? I will let you do your own research and make your own judgements. His colleague’s take was that consuming this cylinder bottle of “liquid food” increased his productivity in the office. What? He voluntarily consumes this stuff?

Another friend shared with me his morning breakfast. A fruit and vegetable packed smoothie – which sounded delicious – until he threw in the 24g protein packed scoop of snickerdoodle flavored whey protein. Stop there!

And finally, a girlfriend who is constantly on the run with five kids. She is a self-described “clean” eater. A go to protein for her might be boneless, skinless chicken breast cooked with olive oil cooking spray and no salt. Bad idea for so many reasons. When I saw her last she gave me a cute little “protein ball.” Protein balls are her thing. Just pop a bunch of nutritionally balanced ingredients in a food processor, pulse away, roll into balls, and you have an on-the-go nutritional snack. Quick, easy and no baking. Generally speaking I like the idea of these “protein balls”. Finally, we are using “real” food – not engineered liquid food or snickerdoodle flavored powder. But, how can we make them taste better, have better texture? Hence, my inspiration for continuing education!

  I spent a Saturday afternoon educating myself. My challenge was to develop a nutritional high protein convenience snack made with “real” food that tasted good. I needed variation in texture and depth in flavor. I tried sweet, I tried savory. I tried TVP – that’s where I drew the line. TVP, textured vegetable protein. This is the main ingredient in dishes like vegan “chicken nuggets” and vegan “beef tacos.”  It provides the protein and texture without the meat. Uh, really? Not sure this qualifies as “real” food.

After many trials and an entire pantry of ingredients utilized, I finally landed on a snack I was pleased with. High protein, lactose-free, and no refined sugar mini muffin bites. Nice texture and good flavor. I sampled them to a few of my best critics. Thumbs up all around. Most importantly, my girlfriend with five kids loved them. Then she asked if she could leave out the egg and throw all the ingredients in a food processor to make them into “protein balls.” Nooooooo! Enough with the protein balls!

My self-written course on high protein convenience snacks began and ended on that Saturday afternoon. I will make the mini muffins again, they were good. But until I get around to it, my go-to high protein snack will be a simple and nostalgic one: a fresh cut apple with a couple tablespoons of peanut butter.

I’m freshly back and still unpacking from two glorious weeks in Florence and Tuscany.  What an amazing destination for someone that loves wine and food!

My first full day in Florence was an immersion into the food culture of that city.  I had the privilege of sharing the day with Sharon Oddson Gargani, author of “Once Upon a Tuscan Table”, in the kitchen at her restaurant Trattoria Garga.

We began the day with a tour of Florence’s Mercato Centrale, a feast for the senses, filled with scents, a riot of color and every imaginable cheese, meat and vegetable possible.  We purchased the ingredients for our class and then returned to the restaurant where I worked alongside Sharon, one on one, to prepare a delicious lunch which we shared with my partner Michael and our friend Lynn, washed down with bottles of white and red Italian wine.

Working with the ingredients from the mercato brought a whole new meaning of “farm to table”, since we were so close to the farms and purveyors that sell their local products there.

The culinary traditions in Tuscany run deep.  We tasted the traditional Florentine dish peposo in several restaurants.  The rich history of this dish goes back to the construction of the Duomo.  Workers at the kilns in Imprunetta were producing the terra cotta tiles that cover the beautiful dome.  Hunger was satiated with a hearty stew made from inexpensive cuts of beef that had been heavily peppered for preservation, thus the name peposo, derived from “pepe” or pepper. More pepper was added to help keep the stew even longer.  The stew was cooked in massive clay pots in the same furnaces that produced the tiles. The labors ate the stew with plenty of bread and washed it all down with watered-down red wine.

In Florence and Tuscany today, peposo is served in virtually every restaurant. Rather than inexpensive beef, it is now prepared with much more luxurious cuts like beef short ribs or veal cheek, aromatic vegetables and plenty of good Chianti wine, served with a large bowl of Tuscan white beans and olive oil.

With the first chill of fall in the morning air, twelve or so other food adventurers and I boarded a small tour bus yesterday morning – courtesy of Marche – for the drive to Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery in Champaign.

Owners Wes Jarrell and Leslie Cooperband have created a dairy and creamery oasis in Central Illinois, the first ever goat cheese producing farm in the state, while practicing core principals of sustainability and environmental stewardship.

We toured their busy, working farm, got up-close-and-personal with the goats, and were served a lovely lunch under the trees with foods that were grown, harvested and created within yards of where we sat. Pretty freaking cool.

A stop in their farm market at the end of the day means that I have some of their fabulous, brie-style goat cheese in my refrigerator right now, just waiting to be tempered and enjoyed in some, delicious, creative way that truly pays homage to Prairie Fruits Farm and their mission. For the past two years, I’ve taught many classes at Marcel’s that feature Marche cheese in every course. The next class, celebrating autumn flavors is running October 10 (shameless plug, a few seats are still available!) Honoring small farmers and producers who respect our planet, and bringing attention to their efforts is a one of the most important things a chef can do. All you need to do to try some of Prairie Farm’s product is pop into Marche!

 I plan to pay my respects to that small wheel of “Little Bloom on the Prairie” goat cheese in my refrigerator with white wine poached pears for a delicious salad!rd