Cooking Class

It finally worked out, I got to join a cooking class today! Another one of those days with an early start. I was supposed to wait for my driver at my hotel, who then texted me and showed me a picture of his flat tire. I then booked my own car and made my way to Nia‘s cooking class in Seminyak, north of Kuta. Upon arrival, we left for the local market to be shown all kinds of typically Balinese ingredients, some of which you can see below.
We then were brought back to the cooking class where I had the pleasure of being in a small group of three - with a couple who lives in Munich! (It was only towards the end of the class that the chef asked us why we were speaking English all the time and not a single word of German to each other… But since he was raised British, it seemed only right.)
We were instructed to follow three rules:
1. Don‘t chop off a finger (not sure if he specifically ruled out other body parts).
2. Only say nice things to others.
3. Don‘t talk about politics, religion, Australian football.
Our group kinda broke the third rule every now and then. Yep, you guessed it. Australian football again. Can‘t stop talking about it.
All of us went on to make 9 dishes in total. This cooking class (Nia Bali Cooking Class) is one of the best rated ones out there for Bali and this is absolutely justified. They ran a tight, efficient ship. While we were watching and listening to the chef explain something, his staff cleared out stuff we wouldn’t need anymore (we hardly ever noticed), brought in the next trays of utensils etc. Highly efficient and well-organised. All the chopping, mortaring and frying finally paid off, when we all sat together and enjoyed our 9 dishes. There were so many leftovers! None of us, however, thought to bring tupperware. Ah, what could have been.
All in all an awesome experience, the chef really knows his stuff, I learned that candlenuts are a great laxative (you never know when that knowledge might come in handy) and I met 2 great new people! Also, the food was yummy.Read more