Back to School: Cooking class in Sydney
Continuing with my string of cooking classes in New Orleans, Istanbul, Chiang Mai, and Luang Prabang, I signed up for one at the Sydney Seafood School, part of the Sydney Fish Market. Salt and pepper shrimp and squid (really salt and pepper anything) are among my favorite Chinese dishes, but I've eaten both good and bad versions, so thought that I would take a class to learn more.
Our teacher was Brigid, showing us below how to cut the squid. Seeing the two long tentacles and the two big eyes immediately brought Squidwort from SpongeBob SquarePants to mind. I have to admit, I was expecting a Chinese chef, but Brigid was excellent. She taught us how to choose the best seafood, how to devein and dehead shrimp in one step, and of course, how to cut the squid into pieces.
I was happy that the only concession the recipes made to Western tastes was taking off the shell of the shrimp before cooking. The coating was very light, and we used real Sichuan peppercorns since they seem to be readily available in Sydney.
I liked the squid even better than the shrimp, probably because I've had a lot of good shrimp before, and a lot of bad squid. The squid we prepared (we each got to clean and cut up our own squid!) was so tender. I learned that tender squid is not just a result of cooking for the right amount of time, it's also because we removed all of the membranes, leaving the flesh. Plus, I didn't realize that calamari was a type of squid, but not all squid were calamari, and calamari is the most tender of all. So when the restaurant or store says "squid," it's not calamari.
Unlike all of my previous cooking classes, my Sydney Seafood School classmates were all locals. So unfortunately there wasn't the convivial travel story swapping that happened at the other classes, and at the end of eating everyone pretty much just wanted to go home since it was a weekday night. A word of advice: don't arrive too early and try to leave with other students, the Sydney Fish Market is pretty deserted at night!
