STAFF REVIEW: JAPANESE CUISINE COOKERY CLASS IN LONDON

Travelling from Brighton to Covent Garden, it seemed a rather easy-going journey and turns out it was just that. Once out of Convent Garden underground station, we completed a short 5-minute walk to the delightful School of Wok. 

As we approached, we noticed a cookery class already taking place, so we were keen to get stuck into ours. We entered School of Wok with a warm welcome from the staff who immediately took us downstairs into the other cookery room. The downstairs cookery room was presented and prepared perfectly for our class, with snacks and complimentary beverages at the ready. 

Once everyone had arrived, we were handed aprons with the instruction to write our name down onto the sticker which we all had at our chosen station. They were around 12 people within the class, and everyone seemed very excited to be there and ready to start the delicious Japanese cookery class. 

Settling in, our chef kindly introduced himself as Paddy, and we went through a quick introduction of what we'd be completing throughout the 3-hour class. After a quick demonstration of how to cut our vegetables for our Prawn Yaki Udon ingredients, we were set to go back to our stations and begin preparation! We cut match stick pieces of onion, carrot, pepper, Chinese cabbage, mushroom, ginger and spring onion for decoration at the end. 

Following this, we went ahead and watched another demonstration for our next dish, the Katsu chicken curry and the creation of the panko crumb chicken breast. Once we had our turn at coating the chicken, we went back to our stations to listen to the next step of our delicious class. The dumplings!

Here, we went through the ingredients along with how to make the shapes of these dumplings. Who knew there were up to 2000 ways to shape them! Our dumplings were filled with onions, garlic, pork mince, coriander, ginger, Chinese mushrooms and finely chopped Chinese chives. Then, it was time for a quick snack break to try them out. They were delicious, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the different shapes you could make. 

We then began going through the ingredients for the delicious Katsu curry sauce. We began gently cooking the onions for around 2-3 minutes before adding sugar and leaving it to fry. Then we added a delicious variety of spices, a few of those being turmeric, paprika and curry powder. 

After completing this, it was time to watch the demonstration of creating our prawn stir fry. We were informed of the all-important ingredient for this dish which was the Dashi Powder. Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either, but Paddy quickly mentioned this could be brought in any Asian supermarket. Once we were set to prepare ours, we headed back over to our hob to get going. The smells throughout the kitchen were incredible, a mixture of delicious spices and stir fry made our stomachs rumble. 

Then it was time to eat! The table had been nicely prepared for our Japanese feast. First, I tried the Yaki Udon Noodles, then Katsu Curry along with the side of dumplings. It was all delicious. Of course, I couldn’t finish it all, but in preparation for that the venue had provided take away boxes. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this Japanese Cooking Class; the structure is good thoughout and the atmosphere was great. A massive thank you to School of Wok for having us and, most importantly, a huge thank you to Paddy, our wonderful head chef, for your patience and friendly teaching skills. We would love to come back!