Ah Pui Goes Cooking

Having always looking everywhere to satisfy my craving for good food, I decide to venture into a brand new frontier ... cooking class to learn how to cook myself. So that I won't have to pay through my nose to someone to cook for me, using ingreidents that only cost <>
Attended this 'French' cooking class at Raffles Culinary Academy 2 weeks ago, hoping to come out of the class to be able to cook up a meal worthy of a Michelin star.

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The 'classroom' actually is a state of the art kitchen, with working stations for us to test out our cooking skill. We are suppose to learn 3 dishes,

a) Homemade Truffle 'Brioche' with poached Foie Gras and Braised 'Granny Smith'.




Quite a mouthful, but to put it simple, it is just Foie Gras with 'chopped -Vinegar soaked green apple' and butter bread. Call me suaku, this is the first time I tried truffle sliced from the actual whole truffle itself. By itself, it does had much taste, but it do have a strong and nice fragrant. The Foie Gras is really soft and it melts in my mouth nicely.

b) Roasted Turbot with steamed Baby Bak Choy and Smoked Potato 'Vine Tomato Confit'



aka .. A very small piece of roasted fish (slice) with a piece of bak choy and some other veggie with potato.
This is the first time I heard and saw a Turbot. But I got to say that the texture of the fish is really good. I will sure to try this fish again when I got the chance. It was not too soft like Salmon, Grouper or Cod. It is a bit firmer, sort of like soft tender chicken. The balsamic and olive oil soaked roasted tomato is great. A bit of sweet and smell great with the balsamic and olive oil.

c) Vanilla "Panna Cotta", Raspberry and Hazelnut Ice Cream.

Who can say no to ice cream .... especially good soft ice cream.



Overall, the experience is good, although we don't get much hands-on except for the 2nd dish. So there goes my dream of coming out with a 1 Michelin Star dinner. As a typical 'French meal' the food are nice to see, nice to eat but expensive and can't really fill your stomach.

Spending hours to prepare the dishes. The Foie Gras need to clean and remove its vein, then preapre and poached it, spending at least 2 hrs on this. And for the 2nd dish, we will need to prepare each of the item (fish, tomato, potato, bak choy) seperately, another 2 - 3hrs gone. And end of the day, only a tiny portion goes to our plate .... I don't think French cooking is for me.

Food, Ah pui score of 8/10. Cooking .... 3/10 and unless you have plenty of time to spare.