Last week I was invited to the Underground Cookery School, near Old Street, for a cookery class with 20 other food bloggers, hosted by CurrysPCWorld, for #currysinthekitchen. All week I was wondering what the correlation between a computer shop and a cookery class was (bar the obvious fact that we food bloggers use computers to blog - which I didn't think was the link) but all became obvious when we arrived - CurrysPCWorld now stock kitchen gadgets! Ta-da - the reason we were there!!
Despite my best efforts to arrive cool, calm, collected and on time, I arrived half an hour late, flustered and in my normal state of everything at a million miles an hour. I was greeted by the CurrysPCWorld team, their PRs and the guys who run the cookery school, who had an apron waiting for me, ready to don for our cookery class. Camera out, apron on, I was given a glass of bubbles and told to help myself to trays of arancini, sausage rolls and smoked salmon on biscuits to nibble on before we got busy in the kitchen.
I have to say at this point, that although I had a super fun evening, I was a little disappointed at the level of cookery class we were given - it was all a bit... basic. I didn't learn anything. We were cooking a chicken curry, and a pear soufflé, but lots of the ingredients were pre prepared, due to time constraints, and it was more like a cooking demo than what I'd imagined the cookery class would be like.
We started with the chicken curry, for which we boned and chopped chicken drumsticks, then added various ingredients to the pan, most of which were chopped, mixed and ready made for us. Onion, garlic, ginger and chilli went in, followed by the curry sauce the chefs had made earlier for us, coconut milk, our chopped chicken, and some pre-chopped carrot and potatoes. A quick stir, and we poured it into mini Le Creusets, which went into the oven while we moved onto pudding.
Despite my best efforts to arrive cool, calm, collected and on time, I arrived half an hour late, flustered and in my normal state of everything at a million miles an hour. I was greeted by the CurrysPCWorld team, their PRs and the guys who run the cookery school, who had an apron waiting for me, ready to don for our cookery class. Camera out, apron on, I was given a glass of bubbles and told to help myself to trays of arancini, sausage rolls and smoked salmon on biscuits to nibble on before we got busy in the kitchen.
I have to say at this point, that although I had a super fun evening, I was a little disappointed at the level of cookery class we were given - it was all a bit... basic. I didn't learn anything. We were cooking a chicken curry, and a pear soufflé, but lots of the ingredients were pre prepared, due to time constraints, and it was more like a cooking demo than what I'd imagined the cookery class would be like.
We started with the chicken curry, for which we boned and chopped chicken drumsticks, then added various ingredients to the pan, most of which were chopped, mixed and ready made for us. Onion, garlic, ginger and chilli went in, followed by the curry sauce the chefs had made earlier for us, coconut milk, our chopped chicken, and some pre-chopped carrot and potatoes. A quick stir, and we poured it into mini Le Creusets, which went into the oven while we moved onto pudding.
