When we were in Vietnam I asked my Dad "When can we do another cooking class?" Turns out that he said in Langkawi, Malaysia because it is a mix of Indian, Chinese, Thai and Indonesian and it all comes together to make Malaysian food!
I started searching online for cooking classes. I came up on one that came up everywhere. But guess what? We didn't go to that one. I searched again and found one on Trip Advisor called Jimmy's Fantastic Cooking Class at Pia's the Padi restaurant. It looked interesting because all the other ones were really big and I thought we weren't going to find a spot. This one was right next to a rice field and it was beautiful. I told my Dad about the cooking class that I found, and he said "Maybe we can go there!"
A couple weeks later we were in Langkawi, Malaysia. My Dad called the cooking class and spoke to Jimmy. My Dad and Jimmy started talking. Turns out that they didn't have any cooking class spots available, but Jimmy was so interested that me & my sister want to learn to cook, so he did a private cooking class for just our family from 6:00-9:00pm on a day when the restaurant was closed. We were so lucky!
We arrived to Pia's the Padi restaurant and I was pretty excited. We walked in and met Pia, the chef! Jimmy was her husband. She gave us aprons and me and my sister each ordered our own fresh watermelon juice while my Mom & Dad ordered a beer.
Five minutes later we started to learn how to cook with Pia. First up, we learned how to cook vegetable fritters that were covered in chickpea flour and cooked in vegetable oil to make them fry. We ate them with a yogurt sauce and a sweet & spicy sauce. They were amazing!!
After that we cooked some potato and vegetable patties. It was potatoes mashed up with vegetables inside, and coated with eggs to make the breadcrumbs stick, and then cooked on the stove top. My favorite out of those two were the vegetable fritters!
Next up was curry craziness! Why was it called curry craziness? Well, because we learned how to make so many different curries! From this point on, it was only me and my sister cooking! My Mom & Dad were just watching us cook.
First up we learned how to cook curry paste. There are so many ingredients and flavors in curry paste, that it's hard to name them all! With that curry paste we made a butter masala. It was pretty good. I liked my sister's better than mine. I think I overdid it on the chili powder. Not that it was spicy or anything, but it just didn't bring out the cumin as good as hers.
A few tricks that Pia taught me while we were making the butter masala, that I didn't know before, are:
Do not burn anything, and if you do, you cannot change it. You just have to start over, no matter how hard you try to fix it.
When you sprinkle salt into your pan with curry sauce and meat or fish, you should sprinkle the salt only on the sauce part, not on the meat or fish.
To taste a sauce, you get a spoonful and stir it around in the spoon, with your hand in motion. Then you pour it onto your palm and spread it across your palm with your spoon. And then you lick it off your palm!
She also taught me to not be afraid of fire because when we put the butter into the butter masala sauce, the fire jumped out of the pan like in Master Chef Junior!
Always try your food more than once if you have to add anything. For example, if you try the curry and you decide it needs more salt. Even though you think you added enough salt, you need to try it again to make sure.
We also made a few other curries. My favorite out of all of them was the liquid curry that my sister made. But don't only think that my sister made it! Because she used my curry paste that I made, and added in beef broth, coconut cream and yogurt. Yum!
My favorite dish that I made was the fish curry because I liked the flavors the best! But I'd rather make it with chicken next time. I don't really like seafood in my curries.
I had an amazing time! I really enjoyed it. And I also highly recommend it. Pia acted like we were real chefs and knew how to do things in the kitchen. She was really kind and had a great sense of humor! And I have to say one thing . . . if you ever go there, make sure you get the watermelon juice because it is fresh and has no sugar. It is really refreshing when you're doing your hard work in the kitchen. If you go to Langkawi, Malaysia, make sure to check out Jimmy's Fantastic Cooking Class at Pia's the Padi Restaurant!
Cook away!
Paige
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