Cooking Class

We haven’t really cooked much since moving to Singapore. Its too easy to eat out every night. Even coming from Santa Cruz, where we lived close enough to walk downtown to Pacific Avenue every night, we still cooked and ate at home more often than we do now.

To combine the whole cooking and eating out experience, we’ve been taking cooking classes.

Yesterday morning we went with a friend, Eleenor to the Coriander Leaf restaurant cooking studio. Our teacher was the fantastic French Cuisine Chef, Anne Guegan-Blayo, who led us through the preparation of several seafood courses.

We started with a dish I thought would be an appetizer. It was prawn seviche, with tempura calamari, and Thai seafood salad. It included roasted tomato salsa on the side.

Deanna loves squid, so we paid special attention how to recognize fresh squid in the wet market, and how to clean and prep them. The recipe mixed chili flakes and white pepper into the tempura batter, which added a nice kick to the calamari. When dipped in the salsa, this made my favorite flavor on the plate. But this was no mere appetizer; it was a complete meal in itself, especially after several extra helpings of seafood salad, and, of course, the calamari.

We were already full when our second dish was ready, poached threadfin with sauce Americaine. The sauce started with whole crabs browned and flambéed with diced vegetables, and then strained & reduced to a rich dark sauce.

Chef Anne said the sauce was invented when some Americans arrived to a restaurant after the kitchen closed. Their cook threw together a sauce using whatever scraps of crab and lobster was leftover from the evening.

We started our sauce at 10:00 in the morning; and considering how long it took to make, I’m doubtful my tardy countrymen would have had the patience to stay around to savor it. But I’m glad the recipes took time to prepare, because we were eating too much for a casual Saturday morning. By the time this dish was done, I was afraid the endless servings of fish were going to become oppressive.

The main course that followed included two different fish dishes. A red snapper fillets, pan fried and served with asparagus and hollandaise sauce. And a Barramundi/Seabass, roasted whole and served with butter-toasted almonds. This was all incredibly rich, employing an alarming weight of butter. For our final course, we moved out of the kitchen and sat down at a large dining table to enjoy.

While we were eating, Chef Anne was preparing a final treat of fresh fruit fritters with spiced sugar. By now, we had been in class nearly 5 hours. Drowsy from so much rich food, I wasn’t paying attention, so I have no idea how the fritters were made.

We took home two full bellies and some insights from Chef Anne that we might try at home. I’ll be testing our new squid knowledge on our next shopping trip.