Home cooking. Well almost. (1)

When my tutor asked me to join a cooking class, I didn’t take too much time thinking about it. I knew they would make one chef coming from Tallin just for the evening. I wouldn’t have missed such an opportunity. When I saw all the preparation, I was very impressed by what I saw. Paul, the South-African chef, got all the food and ingredients needed for the cooking.

I didn’t know where we were going exactly. I thought we might be in a bigger than usual kitchen but not something as big as we got. When I saw the place, it was bigger than expected. It was in a room used by some local school to organise cooking activities. They got all we needed and more. Enough space for everybody to cook without walking on each other every time we move around.

Central station with the wine station in the left hand top.

When Paul arrived, I knew I would have a long and delicious dinner. He brought with him, three kinds of meats (lamb, pork, chicken), butternut, rice, some apple to go with the pork and of course enough for a dessert. The big advantage of the room was we could all cook at the same time without waiting for dished to be ready to be cooked to do the following ones. On the first table, at the entrance, we had the aperitif which was a nice dry south-african wine. Then in the middle, the main station for the meats and butternut. The dessert and the rice were prepared on the table next to it to avoid too much travelling in the room. Finally in the back of the room, our dining was dressed for 10 people decorated with some items from his country brought by the chef.

When he was explaining what we will have for dinner, he made the promotion of the local producers where he went for shopping. All products, vegetables and meats, came from local providers. He was very surprised most people preferred low price over quality. By just paying a little extra, you could have delicious and high quality ingredients. He tries to use them as much as possible. The only item that weren’t from Estonia was some kind of special spice mix he lives on when cooking chicken.