Last week, I was invited by a friend to take part on this cooking challenge prepared for bloggers and media men. Little do I know about cooking, I braved myself in, for I know that I'm best about the other topic, which is eating! Hehe.
The Cookery Place opened its doors last September 2011. With most classes catering to kids who are enjoying having a "cooking party, The Cookery Place made its way to the market by offering fun and easy to follow cooking strategies that kids as young as 4 can do.
Chef Jan Viray, Chef Rhenee Sy and Chef Paul Samson
Managed by its three young, energetic and dynamic chefs, Chef Jan Viray, Chef Rhenee Sy and Chef Paul Samson, The Cookery Place offers cooking and baking classes for a group of people, young and adult, at a very reasonable price. They also hold special events for a limited number of people, where people can cook and eat the dishes that they will prepare. Cuisines from the different sides of the world can be requested to them, so if ever you are planning to have one intimate party here or just even a date, don't hesitate to ask them.
Upon my visit on this place, I was welcomed by these cute welcoming treats that are very hard to neglect. It was my first time to have an ube cheese cake, and I must say that it was really, really good!
Anyway, after trying those delectable and colorful welcoming treats, I had a chance to explore their very modern and fun kitchen. There were a lot of colors and really good-looking utensils there. Their state-of-the-art kitchenware are made sure to be child-friendly and if not were kept out of the kids' eyes. A break from the common metallic view in kitchens is the doodle that caught our eyes upon entering the kitchen. This one is said to be made by WeeWillDoodle, a local group that does nothing but doodle! Cool, right?
After that eating and touring and eating, the show of the night - our show - started. The three young chefs took turns in the stove explaining what are we going to prepare that night. We were also asked to group ourselves, and luckily, I was grouped with my blogger-friend Ohmski.
Chef Rhenee took the kitchen spotlight first with her Grilled Beef Salad.
She told us some basic and important tips in cooking, and all of that started with washing your hands. She told how that step is very important in preparing food, so she made sure that all of our eyes and ears are on her. After that, she continued with the cooking demo and explained all the ingredients needed for this dish.
More blah-blahs and the cooking started.
Oh, btw, the kind of cuisine that we had that night was Thai cuisine - one hot cuisine that most Filipinos love, including me!
It was my first time to actually have a "cooked" salad. I'm kinda just used to tossing the salad, so why when Chef Rhenee told us that were grilling something, I immediately turned to Ohmski, and asked him to do the grilling and I'll deal with the tossing part of that salad. Haha! In less than 10 minutes, voila! Look at Chef Rhenee's creation!
Grilled Beef Salad
It isn't that healthy looking, but admit it, looks yummy, right? Hehe
After Chef Rhenee, Chef Jan took over the kitchen with the second dish of the night. This time, she shared to us some important Thai cooking tips in order to achieve a somehow authentic flavor.
She prepared in front of us one of the famous Thai rice recipes, the Pineapple Fried Rice.
Pineapple Fried Rice
I never thought that it was that easy! One good thing about studying here in The Cookery Place is that they'll spoil you with all the creativity that you want in your dish. In this case, since we are about to prepare our very own Pineapple Fried Rice, they prepared this really nice curved-out pineapple where we will be placing our Pineapple Fried Rice. :-)
The last but not the least, the "bad boy" but shy-type chef of The Cookery Place, Chef Paul, demonstrated how to cook the most salivating and the yummiest dish of the night, the Chili Prawns.
Known to many food lovers, Thai cuisine is famous for its spicy and sweet and sour and salty kind of dishes. And with this last dish that Chef Paul shared to us, by just looking on how he prepared it - the ingredients, the style of cooking and the plating - it just showed how Thai's pay tribute to color, life and elegance at the same time. And this Chili Prawn dish was "the bomb" that night.
Chili Prawns
Immediately after those demos, the three chefs made the mood a little lighter by sharing some stories on how did they come up with this place. And while doing that, they let the cooking part - our cooking part - begin.
We were divided into three teams, and since the whole casts is short in number, it was I and Ohmski who filled the last team. But nevertheless, it was quite a good team, because we managed to pull it off.
We were given an hour to do our version of those three dishes. With all the ingredients and utensils all laid out on our counter, it was a breeze, really! Well, at first I was quite nerve-racking because I'm afraid that we might not get what the three chefs had made, but thank goodness, after seeing our first plate done, which is the Grilled Beef Salad, the rest went out smoothly.
The chefs told us that part of The Cookery Place's tradition is we eat what we cooked, so they said that we better be sure that everything that we cooked will taste good. Hahaha! And I bet that ours will taste just the right way! Yebah! Hahaha! *self-esteem filling*
Here's our version of those three dishes.
Grilled Beef Salad
Pineapple Fried rice
Chili Prawns
It felt like I was Rachel Ray all throughout this activity! Haha! With just an hour to prepare these kind of mouthwatering dishes, never in my wild imagination that we can really cooked something that looks and smells good like these dishes! And I'm really proud of myself that night!
While dining, chefs Rhenee and Jan shared us that what they have here is actually a dream come true for the three of them. It was like more of playing than working, and with different people that they'll get to know every day, everything is a real pleasure to them.
Apart from the fun and learning that you'll get from enrolling yourself here at The Cookery Place, one will also get some freebies such as certificates, aprons and toques. And in events or parties, The Cookery Place would be delighted to assist you on the things or gimmicks that you wanna have to make you parties or events truly memorable.
As for this June, The Cookery Place opens its calendar for us, and you check with them which of these activities would fit to your taste buds, time and budget for you to experience too the fun and learning that I had with them last week.
For more information, you can check out their website at http://www.thecookeryph.com or you can like their Facebook Fan Page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cookery-Place/251894931496154?ref=ts and follow them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/TheCookeryPlace.
Thank you, The Cookery Place! This is a memorable experience that I will treasure!
Happy cooking and eating, everyone! :-)
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