Eatz Flight to India Cooking Class

Every morning I wake up and find my mailbox full of semi junk. Daily Candy is one of my daily semi junk emails. I say semi junk because I subscribe for the emails, but usually they don't review anything that's worth checking out. But one morning Daily Candy reported on EATZ! It's a cooking class and they were offering a 2 for 1 deal. I persuaded Hye Young to take the class with me. There's an assortment of cuisines to choose from, but we ended up going for Indian.

On monday night, Hye Young and I ventured off to West Hollywood to this cute little house to take our 3 hour EATZ cooking class!

The decor was very rustic and welcoming and our cooking area was set up very nicely.

On the menu:

- Cucumber and Mint Raita
- Garlic Naan from Scratch
- Chat Masala Chicken Skewers
- Green Cilantro and Peanut Chutney
- Spicy Chicken Coconut Curry with Basmati Rice
- Rose-Tinged Rice Pudding
- Wine: Sauvignon Blanc

Here are our Chat Masala Chicken Skewers:

We skewered the chicken

Then brushed on the secret sauce we made.

What a pleasant sight

Our burner was kind of on the fritz so we couldn't get a nice browning at first.

We topped it off with chat masala.

And then...EAT IT! DELICIOUS!

Garlic Naan!! LOVE NAAN!

First you have to make the dough and let it rise for half an hour

Then we minced up garlic and here is HY kneading away.

Use the mushroom technique

Then we put it on the pan and brushed on loads of butter

On both sides of course!

Spicy Chicken Coconut Curry:

First sweat the onions with tomato paste

Add coconut milk and curry powder. YUM

And add chicken stock

boil boil boil!

Then add chillis, chicken, tomatoes, cilantro (ew) and let simmer!

Green Cilantro and peanut chutney:

We didn't get to make our own chutney, but just watched our teach. I HATE cilantro, but this was good. You throw everything into the food processor and then pulse!

Cucumber Mint Raita:

We had to make a group Raita too. Our teacher used greek yogurt instead of regular so it would be thicker. Then added cucumber and some other stuff. yummy.

Then FINALLY...we got to eat it all!!!

Rose-tinged Rice Pudding:

We made this as a group too. Of course Miss sweet tooth gobbled it up and took some home! It was really good. It consists of basmati rice, coconut milk, rose water, and Cardamom.

Two great up and coming chefs after eating our creations in the little outside area!

And here is Hye Young's new friend

A little review of the experience:

We were here from 7-10:30. After work, gym, and then heading over to cooking class, it was an exhausting night. But in the end, it was fun.

The class:

The class was more like a party. There was lots of wine. I don't think I learned that much. I could have followed a recipe on my own. But when would I ever decide to make everything we made on my own? Probably never. I would recommend this as a date or as a girls night out with a big group. I do not recommend this to learn how to cook. The teach kept looking at the recipe. That's a strike in my book. But personality wise, she rocks. Would I take this again? I think I would, but not anytime soon. Maybe in a few months.

The food:

The food turned out just ok. There was nothing amazing tasting. Actually, the flavors were all very toned down. Nothing tasted very Indian. I think this was partly because our teach passed the ingredients to us or threw it in our pot. So we couldn't taste and add more of things. At the end we kept adding more and more salt to our curry cause it didn't taste right. It needed more curry powder and more coconut milk, but we didn't have that at our disposal which was disappointing.

I think the best part of the night was, yes, eating, but more meeting some cool people. It was interesting how everyone there was in a different field of work. It was a big change from DC's govt contracting world. LA is so diverse.

As Alton Brown puts it...Here's to good eats!!!