Fishy Business

After the wonderful experience a few weekends ago at the pastry class at Palate Sensations, I decided to sign up for a few more classes - more adventures in cooking.
This time it was a class on preparation of seafood dishes, one of the food groups that I definitely enjoy eating but always felt was more difficult to master when it came to cooking and preparation.
This was actually Module 6 of the Basic Skills series of classes at PS, conducted by one very good-natured & humourous French chef, Francois Mermilliod, who is Executive Chef at Flutes at the Fort. Must confess that I have not been to Flutes, but after the very pleasant encounter with Chef Francois, it will defintely be on my list of must-visit restaurants. The web site for the restaurant also looks really good - the setting of the restaurant looks & sounds fabulous, not to mention the menu.
But I digress....

Anyway, on the menu that day at the class was fish fillet cooked 3 ways, prawn cocktail with avocado & mango salad & salsa, and fresh oysters which we would learn how to shuck ourselves !
This class was much bigger than the last one I attended - I think there were about at least 12 to 15 people in the room. Cooking was done on both individual & group basis - we all had to learn how to fillet a fish properly, and each person did his/her own fish mousse roll thing(1st way), as well as shuck oysters & plate the prawn ccktail with avocado & mango salad. However, the making of the beer batter for the fish fillet (2nd way), the aioli/mayonnaise for the fried fish fillet in beer batter, the fish paste for the fish mousse roll, the teriyaki sauce (the above pic is of the flambe-ing of the sauce !) for the baked cod (3rd way), the avocado & mango salad & the tomato basil salsa for the prawn cocktail, were all done in groups. This picture below shows the "magic hands" effect of several group members preparing the aioli/mayonnaise.

Meanwhile, Boon Seh from Sensus Wine Studio, brought some Spanish wines for us to try, to go along with the food we were busy preparing. This kind of reminded me of the Cookworks program on the Asian Food Channel, where a bunch of people are taught how to cook by the affable Donna Dooher, who "takes the inept & makes them adept". On this program, they have an inhouse bartender who prepares complementary cocktails for the aspiring cooks, so they all have a very enjoyable time with good food & drink during & at the end of the whole cooking lesson. And if the dishes didn't turn out as great as hoped for, well, the drinks would have made it all better ! :-) Unfortunately for me, all the wine had run out by the time I had some food in me so I missed the chance of tasting them. I was told that they were great. I did get the chance, though, to try some lovely olive oils & olives brought in from Australia by 2 ladies from D'Light Pte Ltd for us to taste. Ended up buying both types of olive oil, one fruity & the other peppery, for future culinary attempts at home.

I am proud to say that we all acquitted ourselves rather commendably ( including this newbie to the class ). Even picked up some tips on how to cut vegetables properly (since I missed the earlier classes). Am rather proud of how my prawn cocktail with mango & avocado salad looked after I plated it....

Also proud of the fact that I now know how to shuck an oyster, having opened 3 during the class & gobbled them down with just a squeeze of lemon juice on top...yum....
Had loads of fun and am looking forward to the next class this saturday, which is on cakes & pastry ( my favourite things to make ! ). Watch out for the next post....