Back to school: Indian cookery masterclasses

I love going to cookery classes! Sometimes nothing beats hands on training, or "zoom-on" training and I wanted to share a couple of the classes that have made a big difference to my cooking skills. I particularly wanted to share the Indian cookery class with you as not only was it great, but the teacher does some classes online so it makes it more accessible if you're not based in the UK/London.

This is the first post on the topic, more to follow including a bread baking class that my husband Nick went on: he came home and shared his knowledge with me and for the first time ever I can make a tasty wholemeal loaf!!

Cooking with Monisha - Dosa day and online Biryani masterclass

A Dosa is a South Indian fermented rice pancake and they are things of beauty!! They can be crispy and light and I love them with fresh coconut chutney. I had struggled and struggled to make them myself, I had read endless recipes, watched endless YouTube videos and I just couldn't get them right: sometimes the batter wouldn't ferment, sometimes it was just stodgy and the dosa was claggy and doughy. It was honestly driving me nuts as I couldn't work out what I was doing wrong. And then I found Monisha and I was saved!

Monisha Bharadwaj teaches chefs and home cooks how to make amazing Indian food. Her recent cookbook won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award 2020 Best Indian Cookbook in the World: How lucky was I to be taught by her!

The dosa masterclass day worked a charm, as Monisha said, its like riding a bike, once you learn how to make dosa correctly you never forget. I'd really recommend Monisha's classes. The day was really hands on: we learnt how to make 2 different types of dosa, a semolina pancake, two chutney's, a home made sambar powder for a carrot sambar, upma which is a savoury semolina dish and the potato filling for the dosa - you certainly work up an appetite for the fabulous lunch you then sit down and eat together.

My other top tips for making dosa at home is to buy an instapot to ferment the batter, it's brilliant, it makes fermenting the batter so predictable. Without one and in the damp cold UK weather mine struggled to ferment and took hours. If anyone wants to know how I make mine with the instapot add a comment and I'll share. The other must have is a decent blender. After soaking the grains overnight you need to blend them to a smooth paste - I literally had smoke coming out of my nutribullet when I used it to try and blend them (I totally do not recommend it for this!). Turns out my lovely husband had a kitchenaid in the loft, it works a treat. If you want to buy one I've used Hearts of Stur before for other kitchen kit and would recommend them link to the blender here

I loved the class so much I signed up to do a zoom biryani class last month. As you can see from my other posts I am obsessed with learning how to cook the perfect biryani and once again Monisha sorted me out. The class is pretty intense so do the prep first!! Make sure everything is chopped, peeled, grated and you've read the instructions fully. In two hours we made a stunning chicken biryani, a channa masala using a great technique of making a paste with the ginger and garlic (usually I just grate it) and a zingy raita (the key is the ground roast cumin)

The thing I love about Monisha's classes is that she doesn't just give you the recipe she teaches you how to cook. The session is peppered with pearls of wisdom like "taste your marinade, you should make a face as it should taste too sour/salty/hot as if it tastes nice to eat now it's not strong enough as it will be watered down when you put the meat or veggies in it". This is me taking a well earned break with a beer whilst the biryani cooked, we all sat down and had a zoom chat with the class. Monisha is running a biryani class again on Fri 29th October, go on, sign up, you won't regret it! Sign up via her Instagram page here