Cooking Class

I had made arrangements for a cooking class ahead of time. I had the address and that morning Jack dropped me off in front of an alley and pointed, indicating, apparently, "that way". The address was for the alley, not a specific building. I picked out another number on the address and found that house. Fortunately the owner was looking out for me.

The space was cool. It wasn't sterile like a professional kitchen usually is, but it wasn't too homey either. It was a large space with nice personality.

That day I was the only student, and as I was talking to the owner/translator there were knocks on the door and plastic bags of ingredients were passed in. One of the first things I was asked by the chef, who spoke no English, was whether I was willing to pull the heads off shrimp. At first I thought "ew", but then I reasoned that I had murdered many a lobster before tossing it into a pot of boiling water, so I said I had never done that before, but I would try. Meanwhile, the shrimp were so fresh they were jumping out of their little bowl. I grabbed one of the slimy little things and started to pull the head and it squirmed around in my hands and I wimped out. You can see my "wimping out" expression on one of the above pictures. The chef and the translator laughed and the translator told me she had learned a new word earlier in the year from another American, "squeamish". I asked if we couldn't chop the heads off, wouldn't that be faster anyway. The response was that it was just so easy to pull the heads off. So, the chef pulled heads and I cleaned them up from there.

I was given a Chinese cleaver to do my prep. I never use a cleaver. The chef critiqued me on my knife technique (I'm sure the students in my next knife skills class will like to hear that!), pointing out that I was using the French technique (duh!) and not the Chinese technique. I asked the translator if she had ever heard the expression"You can't teach an old dog new tricks" and that was met with a blank look. I explained what it meant.

Other than the extremely fresh shrimp the only exotic ingredients were the preserved eggs. One was preserved in salt and one was preserved in mud. They both had the consistency of hard-boiled eggs. They didn't taste different, but no doubt there is some lore behind the technique.

So the chef and I cooked away and made Amaranth with Golden and Silver Eggs and Singaporean Fried Vermicelli. Both dishes were good. When I commented that the amaranth tasted similar to spinach, the translator said "No, it doesn't."

In the end, despite my clumsy technique with the cleaver, the chef said my ingredients were nicely prepped, and he gave me thumbs up on my seasoning. Whew. It was fun. I hope to go back.