The other week I headed down to the East Side (can I call it that?) for a very special event, at the St Katharin’s Docks – a healthy cooking class with Stu, the chef, organised by LV who regularly promote healthy living.
The evening at the Smart School of Cookery was great, filled with good food, seeing new as well as some familiar faces and learning a few things about cooking a few Asian dishes the healthy way. and of course, we got to eat all the delicious foods in the end.
I was one of the last ones to arrive so I ended up sitting at the end of the table. That wasn’t a problem at all as the company was great: Mel, Lynda, Victoria and Amanda were excellent conversationalists and its been great to get to know them and their blogs!
All the recipes prepared were Thai or at least inspired by Thai cuisine. We had first had lime and chilli cured courgette, using the same recipe as the prawns but served as a vegetarian alternative.
Asian prawns (also cured in lime and chilli)
Chicken noodle broth – including making fresh stock, served with a coriander crostini
Thai chicken curry
These were some of the tips I picked up as we were going:
- When cooking, we shouldn’t use olive oil as it is carcinogenic when heated up to a high temperature. Oops looks like we’ve been doing it wrong in my country!
- Alternatively, use rapeseed oil, as it can be used in high temperatures and it was used throughout all the recipes prepared during the evening.
- The trick for not crying when chopping oinions is to breathe through your mouth.
- To cut or grate fresh chilis or ginger easily, just freeze them but leave the skin on, otherwise it will lose its properties.
- Rock salt is more difficult to dissolve, compared to sea salt.
- Chicken should be poached in cold water before being added to the curry, as it will make it easier to cook and also healthier.
- When making sticky rice, use the pudding variety as the results will be, well, stickier.
As you can see from the photos, the food looked great and tasted even better. My favourites were definitely the Asian Prawns, so here is the recipe, if you fancy trying them yourself.
Asian Prawns recipe
Ingredients
3 medium raw tiger prawns deveined and butterflied per person marinated for 3 minutes in:-
2 tsp each of finely chopped chilli/garlic and grated ginger
Juice and zest of 2 limes
1 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
Seasoning
Preparation: Heat up the oil in a skillet, place the prawns around it, as that way it’ll be easier to know which ones need turning over when they’re done. It’s that easy!
Hope you enjoyed these tips and recipe. Which dish would you like to try?
Thank you Joe’s Blogs for another great event and thank you LV for the invite. (words and opinions are my own, as usual).
2 Comments
In Greece we use a lot olive oil, but usual in the end, a bit before we are going to turn off the heat. Never use it to fry food.
It was lovely meeting you. too! Thanks for the mention. It was a great evening, wasn’t it? I had no idea either about the olive oil.