Monday, August 17, 2009

Cooking Course: Singapore

We were unable to find a cooking course while traveling through Malaysia, so we were very excited to find the Cookery Magic courses in Singapore that taught regional cuisine, including Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and Malaysian. Several different regional cuisines were offered during our time in Singapore and we decided to join the Malaysian cooking course offered later in the week. By this time we have had taken 5 different cooking courses and each were so very different in class structure, teaching style, and methodology that we weren’t sure what the course would be like. But we did know one thing – Singapore is hot and humid and tiring and by the time we made our way across the city and walked from the MRT to the class we were exhausted and not very excited about the course. The class was held in a residential area of Singapore and as we walked through the front gate to the front door we quickly became more excited about the class. The front yard of the house was lush, tropical, serene, and tranquil.The personal-spa-front yard had a small koi pond with fish we could pet like a dog and would suck on our fingers. It felt very strange.
We were immediately greeted by the cooking instructor Ruqxana. Soon everyone arrived and we were ushered into the kitchen.And to our utter joy and relief we were all given seats along one wall of the kitchen where we remained and watched Ruqxana discuss Singapore’s unique cuisine
introduced us to exotic spicesshowed us how to bring out flavorsand introduced to new flavors and tools
Ruqxana reminded us of our Japanese cooking course instructor Elizabeth Andoh. Both Ruqxana and Elizabeth are incredibly knowledgeable of the history of local ingredients, as well as fascinating medicinal facts, cultural significance, and unique culinary techniques. We were definitely able to take away plenty of inspiration.

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