Tried and Tested: One shot Korean cooking class at Michaels Culinary School in Inverness
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I have always enjoyed travelling around the world and exploring new dishes and recipes. This to me means focussing on the local cuisine and immersing myself in the culture of a place.
So, it only made sense for me to choose a Korean Cuisine class as the very first cooking class I take since moving to Scotland, right?
Jokes aside, it wasn't an easy task choosing which type of food I wanted to learn more about at one of the One Shot classes at the new Michaels Culinary Cuisine, which was started only eight months ago by friends and cooking enthusiasts Connor Rae and Michael Fallows.
The choice is among 12 different cuisines, from burgers to Mexican, from seafood to Turkish and Thai. Italian is also available but let's face it, who would appreciate an Italian signing up to the class?
Anyway, there was plenty of other choices so given the option to learn something completely new and very much unknown to me, I went for the Korean Cuisine option for the class.
And a bad choice it was not: leading the class, Connor went over some basics of linguistics and culture useful to approach the dish (well, dishes) that we would cook: Korean barbeque was on the menu for the day.
At the moment, the school is based in a city centre flat, which offers space for a couple of people to roll up their sleeves and learn some cookery skills. The homely environment didn't take away from the overall experience: instead it felt quite easygoing and, as one of the main goals of the school is set to make people more comfortable cooking at home, it creates a more laid back and relaxing environment.
The course was fun, informative and with a good variety of techniques that can be used across various dishes.
From preparing tasty marinades for the meats, to pickling different vegetables for the banchan – the light side-dishes that go along with the BBQ – and sizzling the steak and pork chops, all was well explained, easy, all in all quite fun.
Connor explained each step clearly and the nice touch was explaining how to eat Korean BBQ (using the Samm, which is a wrap - we used lettuce leaves - to wrap the protein, banchan and sauces) and most importantly, to get to try all of this and take the food at home. I was very happy to go home with a folder of recipes and notes, which will be massively helpful to replicate the experience at home.
The food in the end was all very tasty and I loved being able to combine the different parts in a variety of ways.
Another good aspect is that all classes can be adapted to accommodate customer needs such as a vegetarian diet or allergies such as nuts and dairy. So, something that can be an option for groups with a variety of palates!
At the moment the school can host two people each time, but the aim is to expand to bigger premises where groups of up to eight people will be able to attend. It will definitely be interesting to see where this leads the young duo, as they seem to have some really interesting plans in mind for the new venue.
Another concept I really likes is that young people can also join Teens classes so that they can take home cooking skills that can really be helpful in their lives (or, why not, unleash some young culinary talent in the Highlands?)
So, if you fancy a few hours of fun and informative food-making, at a reasonable price (the one-shot classes are around £53 each for three hours), I would really recommend giving it a go!
More info at https://www.michaelsculinaryschool.co.uk/.
