To help promote the upcoming Paella Festival in Valencia pop-up dinner, I decided to demo how to make Gazpacho on WCIA's lifestyle show called  ciLiving . Gazpacho is a healthy chilled summer vegetable soup that requires no cooking. Most people use tomato juice as a base for Gazpacho, but if you start with V8 instead, you're already halfway there. Of course, I add more fresh veggies for both texture and nutrition.  Since Gazpacho is a tomato-based soup, it didn’t exist until the discovery of the new world where tomatoes came from. The Spanish and Portuguese brought tomatoes back to Europe in the 1400s and they were the first people to make Gazpacho. Today it is popular all around the Mediterranean and there are many different variations. You can taste this dish on September 1 when I will be making  this exact recipe  at my next pop-up dinner at Harvest Market. Gazpacho will be the first course served, but the featured main course will be my version of ...

As of right now, there's only one seat left for this Sunday's " Persian Royal Feast " pop-up dinner ( reserve now if you've got Sunday night open). We're taking August off, but starting in September, we will be back on schedule with our monthly Sunday night pop-ups. On September 25, we'll be going to Spain to celebrate the annual Paella Festival in Valencià . Traditionally cooked outdoors over an open fire, paella is a Mediterranean rice dish that's especially popular during holidays and celebrations all over the world. At our Sunday night banquet, we will be cooking up a big batch of seafood paella along with a few other popular Spanish side dishes. Kilya, our mixologist will also be creating a variety of sangria for your tasting pleasure. On October 27, we will be going to Oaxaca, Mexico, to celebrate Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), an ancestral festival with deep roots in ancient civilizations like the Aztecs. A special menu of unusual ...

In July 2023, we launched a series of Sunday night pop-up dinners featuring gourmet meals from exotic destinations around the world. We are happy to announce that these special themed dinner parties will continue in 2024 with a brand new season of exciting new culinary adventures. We're lucky that Champaign-Urbana is home to an amazing variety of restaurants serving a broad range of international cuisines. Despite this abundance, we’re still missing a few important culinary traditions. Our goal is to fill in that gap with unique dining experiences not typically available locally. Here's what we've planned so far for this upcoming year: February 11 - Valentine's Dinner in Napa : A romantic five-course gourmet meal with wine pairings for every course March 17 - An Evening in Český Krumlov : An authentic five-course traditional Czech meal with wine and beer pairings April 14 - Mumbai Street Food Tour : A guided survey of all the best eats available in this vibrant India...

Pinchos are small finger foods served at bars and taverns throughout the Basque Country straggling the border between Spain and France. In the center of Basque country is San Sebastian, a world-renowned culinary destination with the second most Michelin stars per capita in the world (after Kyoto, Japan). The city is also known for pinchos (or "pintxos" in Spanish) which are found in the bars of the Old Quarter and elsewhere in the city. Similar to tapas, pinchos have a strong socializing component and are are usually eaten in bars as a snack with wine, sangria or sherry. So what is the difference between pinchos and tapas? Pinchos (literally "spike" in Spanish) uses a toothpick to skewer the goodies to a slice of bread. No spike? Not a pincho, just a tapa.  We'll be making a lot of pinchos and tapas at both our upcoming Spanish Tapas Feast cooking class and our Barcelona pop-up dinner event. Unfortunately, the cooking class is already sold out, but seats are st...

It's going to be a busy fall season at both Common Ground Food Co-op and Urbana Park District's Phillips Recreation Center as we've scheduled a full season of six cooking classes starting in September.  The first class will be "A Taste of Palestine" on September 21 at the Phillips Recreation Center's James Room Kitchen . For the first time, I will step back and assist Fairouz AbuGhazaleh who be the chef du jour and cook up several of her family recipes. According to Fairouz, "Palestinian food begins at home with recipes that evoke feelings of homesickness, happiness and nostalgia that have been passed down by generations." This class is part of my continuing series called "Flavor Principles of Ethnic Cooking" where we travel around and sample the best tasting ethnic cuisines available ( see full menus and details ). If you want to attend this class or the other classes in this series, please register today . From past experience, we know...

Well, it depends on who is doing it. This is how we do it: We dream of international destinations where there are lots of good eats (the more exotic the better). We fantasize what the ultimate menu might be at this destination. We research what wines and beverages might pair well with these dishes. We set a table for 10 people and have one hell of a dinner a party!  This is what makes us different: All of our pop-up events are all-inclusive prix fixe dinners. This means you get a multi-course dinner complete with wine and other beverage pairings all evening long for one fixed price. Unlike at restaurants, all taxes and tip are included as well. Since we're only inviting 10 people, these are small intimate affairs where you can easily meet other like-minded foodies and make new friends. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun. We just pulled off a 10-course Japanese tasting menu around the theme BULLET TRAIN TO OSAKA. We're looking forward to exploring France...