Ashoka cook school ,Linwood near Paisley. January 2015

Yesterday Thursday January 15 I had another day out to the Asoka Cook School situated in Linwood on the site of the Rootes factory that built the famous Hillman Imp.This was a christmas present from Anne perhaps dropping a hint I should do more in the kitchen. There were 7 budding chefs on my course and after a brief welcome it was aprons on and off to our individual work stations consisting of a cooker ,pots and pans,range of different spices and cooking utensils. Everyone was a given one cleaned chicken to score to allow the marinate to penetrate the flesh. Basically we chopped onions and tomatoes to which we added spices and water to make a marinate on our large pans. Once all the ingredients were browned you add the whole chicken with extra boiling water and let it simmer for 40 minutes. When all that was going on we prepared marinates for different types of pakora and then onto the spiced onions which are my favourite. Next we cooked chapatis and another potato dish full of Indian spices. At the end once we had cooked all our food we had a meal prepared by the schools chefs to show us how it should look and taste. A rather large doggy bag was supplied to all participants to take home to show off  all our culinary delights of the day. The whole course took 4 hours so it is a long quite tiring day trying to take in everything the chef is telling you and make sure you added the correct spices to your various dishes. There were several mistakes made by everyone with curries and pakoras being produced that tasted and looked a wee bit different from the normal traditional recipes.