Sam Leong's Cooking Class

Many would know that one of my great love in life would be cooking and nearly every and any thing related to it. To that end, I've bought, collected and accumulated so many things from cookbooks to kitchen equipments, cutlery's, nick-knacks, spices, condiments and blah blah blah. Each time, I've justified to myself, and my dear hubby, that many items that I bought or would want to acquire would serve a specific and special need towards the fulfillment of this great love of mine.

My kitchen cupboards are filled nearly to the brim, my bookshelves loaded with cookbooks and magazines and so is my entire fridge even though I've bought the biggest capacity fridge available in the market. I equate going for extravagant meals at times as an eye-opener and education of the taste buds towards the achievement of greater culinary aspirations for myself. And of course, as with any cooks, one of my greatest passion is to attend cooking classes, especially if said classes are taught by luminary or celebrity chefs. More specifically, Sam Leong, Director of Kitchens for the entire Tung Lok Group, was going to be teaching some CNY classes at Shermay's Cooking School. Of course I had to sign up!

These days, signing up for cooking classes require a little more logistics coordination than the mere reservation of a cooking class, even if some of these classes may have limited vacancies on account of the popularity of either the cuisine or chef. Yes, the main coordination would revolve around to help take care of Faith :)

Usually, Faith goes off to my MIL's place on weekend afternoons, while Louis and I would go about our errands. However, this Sat, my MIL had something on, so it was just going to be Faith and her daddy. But, I was worried if Louis would be able to cope on his own with her on account that he had to pay attention to a few things on hand too. He's got to coax her to take her afternoon nap, cook her porridge and pack them into a thermos for dinner, warm and feed her her afternoon milk, as well as change her diapers. Alright, alright. So, I'm an overly worried mom/wife. Still... :)

We discussed and agreed to radio for help the night before from my BIL and SIL for reinforcement. Thankfully, they were all too eager to pitch in, so my SIL came by around 3-ish pm to help out.

That logistical detail settled, I happily trotted off for my class early, in anticipation that the seats would fill up as many tend to turn up early. It was the first cooking class that I'm attending ever since I was pregnant and the smell of all food and cooking turned me off. Couldn't help being a little excited and eager to go for the class.

Lesson was supposed to start at 3.30 pm and by the time I reached the venue at 3.10 pm, the seats were already two-thirds filled. I saw Sam togged out most professionally in his chef outfit, along with not 1 or 2 assistants. No sirree! We're talking about celebrity and renowned chef, who came along with 3 assistants, all geared out in chef togs too. And they were set out with a portable mini kitchen in the school balcony, ready to whip out more than 40 sets of the 4 dishes that Sam Leong was teaching as food tasting for all the attendees. As Shermay herself puts it, its equivalent to a private dinning experience for all of us. Yahoo and double Yum!!

The four dishes that we were supposed to learn that day were:

1. Crispy Shrimp Ball with Cheese Filling and Coated with Bread Crumbs
2. Baked Cod Marinated with Soy Sauce and Sauteed Scrambled Egg White
3. Braised Abalone, Conpoy with Home-Made Spinach Tofu
4. Warm Home-Made Almond Cream with Superior Birds' Nest
   
   Note: Numbered picture of dishes correspond according with the above dish listing.

I absolutely love the crispy shrimp ball. Its the same filling that is used to as the base of most dim sum dishes (e.g. siew mai, haa-gao, fu-pi-juan etc). However, it does require deep-frying and I'm not that keen to deep-fry stuff at home on account of the grease in the kitchen after. So, perhaps I might use the base to make steam dim sums instead.

I'm fairly certain that everybody loves cod and I'm no exception. Needless to say, I love the baked cod too with the scrambled egg whites. Now this is a dish that I'm likely to want to replicate at home.

The third dish of braised abalone, conpoy and spinach tofu requires a fair amount of pre-preparation work, especially the abalone and conpoy. Louis has the knack of turning up at the class at the right timing becos the 3 assistants were in the midst of serving the dish to all the participants. Louis got to eat the spinach tofu and most of the entire piece of braise abalone before he left. Yes, you read it right! Each participant had an entire piece of braised abalone to himself/herself. I would think that if we were eating at a Tung Lok restaurant, that would easily cost about S$30-S$40 per head?

And in case you're wondering, it would be too much to expect that each participant would get an entire piece of bird's nest in our dessert serving. No doubt, the serving portion, generous as it was, was the serving size as what you would get at the restaurant. What we had was a dollop of bird's nest dropped into our almond cream dessert :)

Serving up bird's nest in this dish would certainly make anyone a revered and most popular dinner host. However, even if you skip the bird's nest, this dish would still be a soothing dessert with just the home-made almond cream and glutinous rice ball. Now this is one dessert that I can certainly make and would be appreciated by my vegetarian and fussy mom *wink*

It being the festive CNY period, Sam Leong was very very generous with the portions for the food tasting. It was like having a degustation serving portion of 4 dishes and by the time we were done, everyone was saying that they were too filled up to have dinner. And the class only cost S$139 nett. It probably would have cost us about that much if we ordered the same 4 dishes at a Tung Lok restaurant and we came away with the recipes and much of our burning and inane questions answered by THE man himself. I consider this a great bargain.

My one and only regret about this class was that I didn't take a picture with Sam as a momento. Alright alright! Louis and my SIL were reminding me to bring the camera and in fact urged me to take a picture with him. But I was too embarrassed to do it then and am having some small amount of regrets now. However, all is not lost. I've gotten Ching to help me purchase one of Sam's cookbook and have the great man himself autographed it. As for myself, I rushed off to meet up with my MIL, Louis and Faith to head for our annual pre-CNY dinner treat by my FIL's sister.

Certainly, I was so full at the end of the night becos its a good Teochew restaurant with a 8-course meal. Absolutely no regrets even if it means I've got to run more on the treadmill next week.