Happy December Everybody! I hope most of you remembered my previous posts on Sur la table and cooking classes so I don’t have to go over all that again. We all know how boring reviewing is 🙂
So to celebrate my Black Friday last week I thought, what better way than go take a cooking class? That too this one was especially special since head chef Amber Lancaster, yes that really nice same one mentioned in most of my other posts, had signed me and my mom up for a Thai cooking class that day for free.
Considering it would be my moms first time at Sur La table I was both skeptical and excited. Especially since every time I sign up for a class she asks me “what’s the big deal about Sur la table” and having to pay $70 isn’t that fun either for her.
Moving back to the class, I was glad to see more people who had even signed up for the class compared to my pasta class in which I was the only member. Not that being the only attendee is bad but a little bit of interaction with others is always fresh.
Note I couldn’t take much pictures since there were like 9 more people who attended the class with my mom and I so too much picture taking would have been awkward.
The class menu of the day was:
- Stir fried rice noodles with broccoli and beef
- Chicken coconut soup
- Forbidden rice pudding with mango
- Roasted Peanut salad
We started class off with a whole lot of vegetable cutting. Even for being in a class of 11, one whole hour of the class was taken into cutting up all sorts of veggies such as basil, onion, galangal, ginger, cucumber, etc. But this was no surprise considering we were gonna cook Thai.
“Be careful, don’t bring your knife that close!” My mom whispers from next to me at every moment that I even touch a vegetable with the knife.
After dicing who knows how many different variety’s of greens, the part of all came; heading over to the grill.
By the way, no that saucepan with purple liquid is not ooze… that’s how our rice pudding looked before fully developing. As promised, Amber would specifically wait and reserve the part of making the dish of stir friend rice noodles for my mom since she wanted to learn that recipe badly.
Once we were done with pudding and let it sit, we accomplished making the spicy chicken coconut soup an everyone sat down and begin drink except my mom and I of course; we don’t eat chicken.
Finally, came the time to make the stir fried rice noodles in the wok pans while other group members worked on the peanut salad. As usual, chef Amber Lancaster was very descriptive of the dish we were about to prepare as she went over tips, tricks, and instructions before we got started.
Here are some videos from the rest of class. Mom tried her best to learn how to flip food from a Wok Pan and finally did so with the noodles right when I had to end the video, also chef Amber gave more instructions.
Summary:
Well I can definitely say class was different thanks to the celebrity appearance. The food also ended up turning out great and we had tons of fun… even my mom stayed a bit after class to talk with our chef instructor! Check out some pictures of the food we made. Note I do not have a picture of the coconut soup since I didn’t take a bowl. The first picture is our stir friend rice noodles, the second picture is the amazing forbidden rice pudding turned out! The third picture is the roasted peanut salad with veggies,
At first I have to admit, I wasn’t excited about other attendees in the class because that equals to more sharing of all the steps of preparing the dish. But, before I knew it, it was no problem at all! Everybody was nice to each other and besides the attention for being the only teen in the class of adults, my mom even had a positive social experience as the people of our table were more than friendly and had many conversations with her throughout the class.
Best of all, everybody was a team player. We have all at least once in our lives had that one person (s) in a group who (first bad word so bare with me) bitches around and takes up all the work or fun parts. Either it’s in a kitchen or project, it just sucks away all the fun but most certainly was not the case in class.
Also, for a promotion Sur la table was doing on the chocolate caramel filled cookies they sell in stores, all class attendees for the day got one free caramel chocolate cookie. And yes that is me and my mom below in our work aprons.
Mom’s opinions:
Different from me who will probably always take Sur la able’s side, my mom had some opinions of her overall experience at Sur la table, that too her first time. Not all them were good but at least they all weren’t bad either
Pros:
- Met some very nice people; made new friends
- Finally learned one of her most desired cuisines, Thai
- Found the food to be delicious and right on spot with the kind of flavor she was looking for
- Enjoyed opportunities with cooking WOK
- Amber Lancaster
Cons:
- Felt the kitchen was a bit too small and crowded
- Overpriced store merchandise
- One of the pans we used she glimpsed at was heavily burned/worn out; she’s a bit picky plus I guess she expected perfect from their cookware since she’s use to me always raving about it at home
Though their might have been cons, my mom agreed she was glad to come and that she felt she learned many new things about Thai she did not learn before and plans on duplicating the recipes made in class at home. Meanwhile, I will be looking out for more opportunities to get her back in that kitchen with that apron on. I really felt it was also a bonding experience since we worked alongside and discussed a lot about the recipes during class.
Great class, Great food, Great chef instructor as usual. Thumbs up! Thanks for viewing this post I hope to be back at Sur la table for another cooking class soon and I am sure I will blog about it. Meanwhile, I will be posting a post with a video of a review and unboxing video of my kitchenaid professional 5 plus mixer I recently purchased so… keep your eyes out for that post in 2-3 days!
– Chef/Author Zubair M
Baked to the Bone 