Cooking with Bosch

My trip last week to the Bosch Experience & Design Center in Irvine, CA was a whole lotta fun! I'll have more info in posts to come about modern kitchen design trends, and the great appliances we got to play with. But I thought I'd start with the great time we had cooking our lunch in the Bosch test kitchen. Along with the 18 designer/bloggers who were flown in for the retreat, there were local designers on hand as well as the Bosch design and marketing teams, plus a full complement of kitchen staff.

Bosch executive chef Kyle Jakobi (who could easily be on a cooking show!) kept us well fed and on task as the entire group of us split into small teams to make and plate several tasty dishes for lunch. This is actually a great "getting to know you" team building exercise.

Chef Kyle going through each dish, what will be involved in preparing it and which appliances we'd be using. We all then selected which dish we wanted to work on.

Each workstation was set up with all the utensils and pre prepared foods we need to create our dishes.

I worked on a duck confit with potato & onion pancakes with Mexican spices.

My team members were Florida kitchen designer Ann Porter and DIY celeb Eric Stromer, who has appeared on shows on HGTV and TLC. Eric and Ann peeled and chopped up all the onions and potatoes while I pulled all the duck from the bone.

Ann and Florida kitchen designer Gloria Graham plate our duck confit, which was topped with avocado and cheese. Eric and I fried all the potato pancakes using an induction cooktop - my new favorite thing!

Texas architect Bob Borson made the most delicious bacon wrapped shrimp.

Boston interior designer Andie Day and California kitchen designer Kelly Morisseau whipping up dessert.

Teammates!