Secrets of Prashad Indian Cooking Course

I recently attended the Secrets of Prashad Indian Cookery Course which was held at the Cooking School in Halifax.

I had the pleasure of working with Bobby, from Prashad during the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme that I have just completed. Prashad is a vegetarian Indian restaurant based in Bradford that came second in the Gordon Ramsay’s Best Restaurant TV series.

I love Indian Cookery and have already completed a few courses in it already so this was a perfect opportunity to support Bobby and Prashad and also learn some of the secrets of Prashad direct from Bobby’s Mother, Kaushy, who is the head chef at Prashad.

The course I attended was called The Secrets of Prashad and it involved cooking the following dishes:

• Chick Pea Curry
• Jeera Rice
• Vegetable Pakoras
• Indian Mint Sauce

I had sampled the Chick Pea Curry when I visited Prashad last month and it was great. I must admit that vegetarian is not my number one choice as I am an avid meat eater but the Chick Pea Curry I based at Prashad was excellent and I really looking forward to recreating it for myself.

The course was held at the Cooking School which is in the Dean Clough building in Halifax. I was very impressed with the facilities and the ambience of felt when you entered the school. The photo below shows the main room at the Cooking School.

There were 20 cooking workstations and each included everything you needed to prepare and serve the recipes you were being taught.

The course stated with Kaushy and Matthew from the Cooking School cooking the Chick Pea curry from the observation area. This was very well thought out with adequate seating and also a roof mounted camera displayed on a large screen so you could get a birds eye view of what was happening  at the business end of the cooker.

After the demo we were set loose to try the recipe for ourselves. I have cooked quite a few curries but the way this was prepared, with what seemed to be a copies amount of sunflower oil plus everything blended and no fresh tomatoes did seem against what I normally did but I must admit the results were excellent.

Below you can see my Chick Pea Curry underway.

Once this was finished I then cooked the Jeera Rice which was pretty straightforward and the finished result can be seen below.

It was now lunch time and opportunity to sample what we had just cooked. Everybody was very happy with the results and I must admit that I really enjoyed my lunch!

After lunch we started on the very easy Mint Sauce and Mixed Vegetable Pakoras. I had never cooked Pakoras before so I was really looking forward to doing these and again, the results were fantastic although I did learn that the oil has to be extremely hot before you start to cook the Pakora.

You can see my Pakoras cooking away below.

These Pakoras came out really well and proved a large hit with the rest of the people on the course.

You were provided with adequate packaging in order to take what you had cooked home and I was left with quite a few take away containers that I took home and we all enjoyed them for our evening meal.

Overall the day was excellent. The facilities were fantastic and the recipes and tutorage provided were first class. It was great to meet Bobby and his mum again and I look forward to booking on the next course with Prashad.

I have cooked both the curry and also the Pakoras again and they proved to be a favourite at home with my wife, parents and in-laws.

The next Secrets of Prashad course is running on the 3rd December 2011.

Check out the reviews of Prashad on TripAdvisor.