Getting competitive at The Kitchen’s Sri Lankan curries workshop
Have you ever done one of those quizzes that tells you which character in Friends you are? I’ve never actually tried it, but I don’t need to. I am Monica. My brother has been telling me I’m Monica since the damned series started. I am a self-confessed teacher’s pet. I’ll do more or less anything to be top of the class. And I’m always the annoying one who shouts out the answer before anyone else has had a chance to raise their hand. I also love to cook (you know that much) and am neurotically tidy. I am annoying as hell – but probably the first person you’d ask to organise a party.
So there’s the background. It should come as no surprise then, that at the cookery workshop I attended last night at The Kitchen, I was irritatingly competitive. To make matters worse, I was paired up with another foodie friend (I’d bought us vouchers for her birthday) who exhibits equally Monica-esque tendencies. We’d been to a cookery lesson together before at Dun Yong, and we knew exactly what we were letting ourselves (and our unsuspecting classmates) in for.
The workshop was on Sri Lankan curries. We made four in total (a chicken and cashew nut number, dhal, pumpkin curry and a green-bean version), plus a couple of side dishes (coconut sambal and a pineapple, aubergine and chilli salad). The chef explained various characteristics of Sri Lankan cuisine, ran us through the ingredients lists, and sent us merrily on our chopping and grinding way…
Needless to say, we had our curry pastes ground and ready before anyone else’s. We were the first to make it to the stove, pans full of sizzling fragrance, freestyling with coconut milk and seasoning, while everyone else was still trying to figure out what a cardamom pod looked like. (I ask you?!) A couple of hours later, we were sneaking tasters of our classmates’ curry sauces to ascertain that yes, ours were definitely better, while our poor victims were upstairs sipping a glass of wine and taking the whole thing rather less seriously. Yep, I told you we were annoying.
Despite (or perhaps because of) all of the above, we actually had a very fun evening. My friend and I love cooking together anyway, and it’s even better when the shopping’s been done, the ingredients are laid out, and the washing up is someone else’s responsibility. My one gripe would be the price, which was €69 per person, excluding some of the drinks we had. I wouldn’t mind paying that kind of money for a masterclass in something truly technical like Japanese knife skills. But for relatively simple techniques in a workshop that’s clearly not aimed at experts, I think you’d struggle to get many people to pay that high a price. Even if all the utensils are made by iittala.
Having said this, if you have the money and the inclination (beginner or experienced in the kitchen), you can be sure you’ll enjoy yourself – with great food and good wine in a high-class cooking-cum-dining space, what’s not to like? Just watch out for the occasional over-competitive mouthy British chick…
