Review: In the Kitchen at Parkview Gourmet

My mom and I had a fabulous date last night at an adorable location. A few months back, Living Social had a great deal on cooking classes at Parkview Gourmet in Libertyville, which is where my parents reside. For $20 per person, it promised an intimate cooking class experience and a $10 merchandise gift card.

This little shop is a bit difficult to locate as it's on a side street in downtown Libertyville. Inside, they have a great selection of specialty cheeses, a small wine selection, specialty beers and rows of adorable gourmet items like imported olives, raw honey cream, biscotti, spices and wine accessories.

The class was limited to six, but the other four people didn't show (rude!), so it was just my mom, me and the employees. We were scheduled to make eight dishes, but scaled it back to four because of the lack of attendance.

After filling up my wine glass with a delicious white wine from Washington, we got into the kitchen. My mom started working on deviled eggs with olive salad topped with white truffle oil. I started on a shave zucchini salad topped with toasted pine nuts. That was really easy, so I ended up helping finish a chicken salad with cranberries on top of toasted wonton wrappers. After we noshed on those, we finished the evening with lacy crepes slathered with marscapone cream and strawberries, then topped with a reduced balsamic vinegar.

Seriously amazing foods. My favorite? The deviled eggs that I failed to photograph. The mix of creamy egg yolks with the salty bite of the olive salad was amazing. Add white truffle oil and I was just in heaven. My mom even bought me a jar of the store's olive salad so I could make the eggs at home. Thanks, mom!

This class was definitely worth the money, especially since the shop owner e-mailed us the recipes to use at home. I think this class would be great for bachelorette parties or for a girls' night. I would certainly do this again - it was a really fun night with fabulous food, and I learned quite a lot.