An Indian Cookery Class in London

Last month I was invited to a Tefal cooking class at L'atelier des Chefs in London. The event included making an Indian meal from scratch with the guidance of a specialist chef and learning more about the Tefal Ingenio product range. I decided to go along having recently returned from India and sampled all the delicious food over there, I was interested in picking up some tips for making similar cuisine back in England. I used to make a lot of curries at home but have to admit after having Pip I tend to cook whatever is the quickest/easiest option. I am keen to get back into making home-made curries though and this was a perfect event for picking up some inspiration. I've been to quite a few blogging events over the last couple of years but this was my first food related one. I used to work in Central London right around the corner from L'atelier des Chefs. One of my first Saturday jobs was in H&M on Oxford Street, all those years ago, as a very young 16 year old! From the outside you would not know L'atelier des Chefs has a wonderful & spacious kitchen at the back ideal for cookery classes. It's actually the most popular cookery school in the UK, with 30,000 customers last year.

The event started with a welcome from the team, meeting our lovely chef Dahlia as well as the other bloggers and an introduction about the Tefal range. Dahlia gave us some information on the correct chopping methods, reasons for using certain ingredients when making an Indian dish and tips for creating the perfect taste. We got stuck in and began with the food preparation. It was really nice working in a team with each of us chopping, slicing, dicing and pealing something different. The aim was to make tandoori marinated chicken skewers or fried paneer for vegetarians, okra and potato curry, coriander chutney and roti. 

Here I am marinating the paneer

Cooking an Indian meal with @TefalUK today. Can't wait to try it! #tefalclass pic.twitter.com/UKQHE5EhZB

— Brighton Mama (@pollyandpip) 16 November 2016

I have made roti and potato curry in the past but the coriander chutney was new to me as was cooking with okra. Whenever I'm in India I eat okra yet don't think I have ever bought it from a UK supermarket. I love the taste and it's definitely something I will try from now on. Once we had the ingredients the cooking began and we all took it in turns to stir, marinate, fry and cook our food. Throughout the class we used the Tefal Ingenio range of pans and appliances. Tefal is famous for it's amazing non-stick cookware and offers products designed for simplifying everyday kitchen tasks. The pans have detachable handles and are therefore suitable for the oven! This makes the job of transferring food from the hob into the oven so much easier and quicker! They also fit into the fridge or the smallest storage space! 

It was great to experience cooking with the Tefal range and I was surprised by how quickly we made the meal. We all finished with a sit down lunch, enjoying what we had just created. Thanks to Tefal & L'atelier des Chefs for providing a lot of inspiration into preparing & cooking in different ways. I will definitely be trying out new methods from now on!

If you fancy trying out a class I'm giving my readers 10% off any of the 60 min, 90 min and 2 hour classes. Just type in TEFAL10 on the L'atelier des Chefs website

This is a collaborative post with Tefal. All words, opinions and photographs are my own. 

Do you make home-made Indian food? What are your cooking tips?