It was time to pony up! After numerous reviews on the culinary efforts of others, it was time to see if I had what it takes to thrive – goodness, even survive – in a kitchen. This posed more of a challenge than you might think.
I am a ‘bloke’ who has only needed to change his gas bottle once since 2011 and I cannot deny a decidedly offhand and infrequent relationship with my kitchen. In truth, unless it can be boiled, toasted or reheated, my default has been ‘take-out, go out or go without’.
But, hey, I like a challenge and perhaps a leopard can learn new tricks, hmm, or dog change its spots? So earlier this month I threw down the oven mitt and took the challenge: I was going to try my hand at some authentic Khmer cooking. Enter the brand new and decidedly wonderful Feel Good Cooking School.
Supported by the team at Feel Good Café, the school represents an effort by the café’s owners, Jose and Marc, to provide budding young Khmer entrepreneurs with an opportunity to start up their own businesses, but there are no handouts here. Each ‘start-up’, of which the cooking school is the first, is expected to prepare a business plan and show a profit in the medium- to long-term.
This is an opportunity that Nara Thuon and Phann Sophon, the proud and enthusiastic proprietors of the new school, have embraced and the cooking school is well and truly their baby. However, on the day of my visit, Sophon was busy with other tasks, so it was Nara who took on the challenge of being my tutor. Instructed in the art of Khmer cooking by his grandmother, with many of her recipes included in the course, Nara left his native province of Battambang in 2010 and journeyed to Phnom Penh, where he has plied his cooking skills ever since.
The school is located on the third floor of Feel Good, on Street 136, where it occupies its own purpose-built kitchen. Bright, air-conditioned and operating-room clean, it provides an ideal location to get to grips with the flavours, styles, tastes and smells of Cambodian cuisine. Each ‘pupil’ is allocated their own workstation, which features a gas hob and equipment, while there is plenty of additional space to accommodate the manoeuvres of the most flamboyant chef.
But what happens when the Feel Good Cooking School, its kitchen and Nara meet a cooking barbarian such as myself? My immersion into Khmer cooking starts kindly at 8:30am, with a brew of excellent Feel Good coffee. Over the drink Nara informs me of his plan to run me through two dishes on this day. This is two less than the norm for a full-day course ($27), which includes snacks, main courses and dessert dishes, with rotating options. At this point, perhaps sensing the onset of kitchen-trepidation in his pupil, Nara presents me with a cookbook featuring the recipes taught here. Detailed, with just the right amount of information and helpful photographs, it’s an unexpected bonus – one that all pupils get to keep after completing their course.
Following an informative exploration of nearby Kandal market, where Nara sources many of the ingredients for his classes, we return to the kitchen to try my hand at the first dish: pork stuffed with coconut flesh. On paper this looks a tad complicated, but with Nara’s able and tolerant tutelage I’m able to progress through the challenge of turning raw ingredients into something resembling the photographs in the school’s cookbook. Strangely, given my kitchen-phobic past, I seem even more adapt at accomplishing the ingredient-to-meal metamorphosis with our second dish, the chicken sausage. Featuring finely minced chicken, seasoned with garlic, shallots, palm sugar and some secret ingredients, topped off in boiled banana flower petal and a tempura batter, the final product looks and smells distinctly appetising.
Again, Nara’s patient instruction is invaluable, leading me through some of the more complicated aspects of the dish, including the hitherto unsuspected nuances of selecting the correct banana petals and then boiling them in the proper way, but the real truth is in the taste. Accepting ultimate responsibility for my creations, how do my dishes fetch up on the taste-o-meter?
We judge the first dish – the pork and coconut ensemble – as good, with the capacity to be made even better with some extra seasoning in the coconut filling. Next, the chicken sausage. This golden brown concoction proves even tastier and goes down as a highlight in my short cooking resume.
I can claim only a small amount of credit, in reality, because my culinary accomplishments on the day come down to the support of Nara. If a kitchen Visigoth like me can transform some chicken, a flower petal and a cup of batter into a tasty snack, then Nara is more than a good teacher; he’s a miracle worker. His grandmother can feel justly proud as he and Sophon take the soul of her cooking to the greater populace.
Feel Good Cooking School, #79 Street 136; 098 252533 or 078 715471.