*AD – this experience was gifted to our household for this post. All opinions, as always, are our own.
In a time when we can’t really go out all that much, cooking at home has become a large part of people’s lives. I have always done a lot of home cooking, though I had not previously taken a cooking class. Larks Live has created a bunch of online cooking classes, all ran by different chefs, which can teach you how to make dishes in the comfort of your own home, live, on Zoom! Dann and I went for the Vietnamese Street Food Feast by chef Jazzi Curley, who has just opened up her own physical cookery in the Devon area! We invited our friend Claire over to enjoy the dinner with us and watch us cook too.
Our course taught us how to cook three things; prawn spring rolls, sweet honey pork patties and Nuac Cham dipping sauce. As this course is online, we did need to purchase all the ingredients ourselves – the list was given to us as soon as we signed up, so we had time to pick up tricky items like spring roll wrappers. Once it was time, we joined Zoom with a bunch of others and started our course.
Despite being all over the country, Jazzi was very good at making everyone feel at home on Zoom, chatting away – which was a very good feeling. She introduced herself and the course on Larks Live, before chatting with us all and then diving into cooking. Jazzi was just a great host throughout, as she kept conversations going, answered any questions, cooked with us, and also taught us a lot! Explaining flavors, balance, and exactly how to wrap these spring rolls were very nice – it did really feel like I was learning much more than I would have just watching a video – and being able to talk to her about items that needed subbing out was a good bonus.
The street food was fun to make – the food itself came out very well, even if neither of us have perfected our spring roll rolling. Once you sign up for a course, you get the recipe sent to your profile, which collects them for you, making it easy to make the food again. We’ve actually made the spring rolls and patties several times since the course and have made the sauce – making tweaks to our own pallet – several times too!
When it came to this specific course, it was a bit of a challenge to really get an understanding of rolling the spring rolls, which was our only real critic with digital cooking classes. Towards the end of the course, we started doing the rolling, and as it was a challenge the rest of the class felt a bit rushed as we were behind doing our spring rolls. We also made a lot of them, as we wanted to practice a lot. When it comes to digital classes, the teacher can’t tell as much if you are doing something wrong and can’t really correct you, so it’s more on the student to ask questions and explain – something we didn’t do perfectly well.
Despite that, it was a fun time. For the price of the course – £15 for 90 minutes – it’s really a bargain and well worth checking out. There are so many different chefs on Larks Live, courses and types of food on there, that you are sure to find a course you’d enjoy. Cook a longs are so much fun and this one really felt like it brought everyone together and allowed us all to cook and ask questions as we explore a new food!