Firat and I had our first cooking class at the New School of Cooking in Culver City!

We picked “Revisiting the Wok” which not only promised to teach us some delicious wok recipes, but also the proper care and cleaning of the new wok we got to take home with us! Our class was taught by a great guy, Chef Jet Tila.

He’s NPR’s Thai Food Correspondent, family restaurateur, and owner of America’s first Thai Market. He teaches at multiple cooking schools in the area, including Sur La Table. Don’t let that innocent, charming smile fool you. This guy is as funny and boisterous as they come. Our class was a fairly quiet and low key group of people: two mother/son pairs, three young couples including Firat and I and our friends Kevin and Lindsay, and three individuals. Besides the Chef, there were two sous chefs assistants and a couple guys in the back on dish washing duty.

The class started with a short lecture of The Wok Commandments, about the proper order of ingredients no matter what type of dish you’re making. This was followed by a 20 minute demo on how you approach chopping the different types of vegetables (“the veg”) and aromatics that most commonly appear in wok cooking. Typically it was cutting things on the biased for a “sexy cut”. Then we returned to our tables to talk through all 6 recipes and discuss some of the ingredients we might be unfamiliar with.

After that, we broke into pairs or 3s and picked the dish we were going to make. Firat and I got Tom Kah Gai soup, which I had mentioned earlier as being one of the reasons for picking the class. We started from scratch with the stock, and I could immediately pick up on which ingredients my previous attempts of the soup had been lacking. Namely, galanga instead of the common ginger, kaffir lime leaves which I’d lost hope in finding, and chili paste in soybean oil which offers an amazing depth of flavor without heat and adds that signature red oil on top of the soup.

In the midst of the cooking portion, Chef Jet would randomly call out “2 Minute Demo” for odds and ends. Mostly for cutting new ingredients, such as making a Pineapple bowl to serve the pineapple fried rice in (Firat’s favorite). Also, after finishing our prep work, we’d individual season our new woks, removing the plasticy coating with a salt rub over heat, then a quick scrub under plain water, followed by reheating on the burner to dry.

At the end, everyone served up their food buffet style and discussed their dishes. Firat and I are proud to say that almost everyone complimented our soup first. Some of our favorite dishes were Fried Shrimp Cakes, a mix of minced shrimp and pork with garlic and ginger, pressed into patties, coated with panko and fried. There was also an excellent Korean cellophane noodle dish (chap chae?) that was really tasty. They poured some complimentary 2 buck chuck wine with our meal, then we left with recipes and woks in hand!

What Gwen learned:
-Ive denounced kikkoman american soy sauce. Buy a chinese, a thai, and a Japanese version and have all three in your pantry to really alter the flavor and authenticity of the dish you’re making.
-Never use soap in your wok.
-When making Thai food, absolutely no kosher salt is required. Only season with fish sauce.
-Shrimp cakes are delicious.

What Firat learned:
-Woks are covered with a thin, layer of plastic when you first purchase them.
-I don’t like cabbage in Tom Kah Gai soup.
-Shrimp cakes are delicious.

Would we go here again? Absolutely! But more importantly, we’d seek out classes specifically taught by Jet. He promised us all a tour of his market, and restaurant recommendations by email whenever we’d like. An all around extremely knowledgeable fun “edutainment” guy.

www.newschoolofcooking.com
www.chefjet.com

culinary, culver city, school, wok