Curry cookery class at Flavours

I was lucky enough to be given a voucher for a curry cookery class at Flavours School of Cookery in Bournemouth (hmmm…and I thought I could already make a mean curry), and I took my good friend Emma, aka Mrs Goo’s Makes and Bakes. We donned our aprons, rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in.

There were six in our group, expertly guided by a professional chef. In 2.5 hours - which absolutely whizzed by - we learnt how to cook three curries from different countries:

• Kashmiri chicken curry

• Penang prawn curry

• West Indian lamb curry

• Fragrant rice

It was great learning about how to layer and balance flavours, which creates a real depth. We got more confident with tasting and adjusting the seasoning as necessary.

It was good to learn three different techniques. The lamb was slow-cooked in the oven, the chicken curry was made on the hob and left to simmer for some time, while the prawn curry was made very quickly in a wok. There were loads of great tips for making things that bit tastier, such as charring the tomato skins on a flame before using and roasting peanuts in oil to give flavour to the Thai curry ingredients.

The best bit of doing a class at a cookery school is having all your ingredients pre-prepared and laid out for you, and having someone whisk away all your mess. The technicians were brilliant.

Chef let us taste everything he made, which I took full advantage of. And that meant we got to take all our cooking home. I had three paper bags full of takeaway containers, plus the half used ingredients such as palm sugar and saffron yoghurt.

It was such a fun evening, and I’ll definitely be back to broaden my culinary knowledge soon. In the meantime, you’ll find me practising my killer curry repertoire!