With time on my hands in a very food-centric country, this week I was very excited for my first local cooking class. Through a local group of expats, I was introduced to the gHotel Cookery School, which offers very small classes taught each month by their Chef de Cuisine. In February, it was a special menu for Chinese New Year: ha mai (steamed prawn dumplings), chicken & sweet corn soup, char-siew chicken with fried rice, and traditional new year cake fried with jackfruit and a side of peanut soup. With all of these dishes to learn, it was going to be an action-packed morning!
I joined 6 other students in the hotel kitchen, where we were immediately set to work. Chef Vincent tossed out tips about ingredients and on how best to prep each dish flew as we chopped, diced, sliced and tried not to lose a finger.
We then tackled the actual cooking part of class – braving huge industrial woks to cook food faster than I have ever seen in my life. The gas fire went from 0 to 90,000 BTUs in nothing flat. One errant move and bye-bye eyebrows.
We braved the flames and managed not to burn anything, turning out some pretty tasty dishes in the process. The process for the new year cake dessert was especially interesting, although my arteries were quaking to see thickly battered sugar cakes browning in the deep fryer as we stirred cups peanut butter, sugar and coconut milk paste into a rich soup.
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