Every month, Carousel – a restaurant that’s part of the Royal Plaza on Scotts Hotel, organizes a cooking presentation event called Cookery Connection. The restaurant’s chefs take turns to demonstrate the preparation of dishes using recipes compiled in a book titled “Carousel”; presumably these dishes are served in the restaurant as well. I attended this month’s event, a showcase of “4 course Western Set” and the preparation of these four dishes were demonstrated:
Cured Atlantic Salmon
Cream of Mushroom Soup
Butter Glazed Cod Fish
Poached Pear in Raspberry
My gf, Mong and I arrived at one of the hotel’s meeting rooms where the cooking demo was conducted. We were greeted with a goody bag containing a free flat egg whisk (sponsored by ScanPan), before we entered the meeting room. I was surprised at the high number of attendance, there must’ve been around 50 people or so. The meeting room was set up with a cooking station towards the front, flanked by a pair of projector screens. This was quite a big production!
Cured Atlantic Salmon
We arrived a tad late so we caught the tail end of Chef Daniel’s preparation of this dish. Fortunately, every attendant was given a copy of the recipe for all the dishes prepared in this event, beautifully printed in color on heavy cardstock. The above photo is the sampling portion of the dish. The Cured Salmon was served with Apple-Shallot topping and a side of Horseradish-Sour Cream sauce.
Cream of Mushroom Soup
This tasted quite nice, very earthy and wholesome. Simple ingredients were used and the method was also fairly simple.
Butter Glazed Cod Fish
Served with Curry Coconut Cream Sauce and topped with Tomato Relish (ie. Salsa).
Butter Glazed Cod Fish – Sampler
Tasty! I like the curry sauce, which went very well with the cod.
Poached Pear in Raspberry
This was delicious, as Chef Daniel poached the pear in a concoction of Raspberry and Cassis Purees, seasoned with Cinnamon and Star Anise. It was then served with a dollop of Mascarpone Whipped Cream. Yumminess!
Poached Pear in Raspberry – Sampler
I really like the syrup. While the recipe for the Mascarpone Cream didn’t call for sugar, I think it’d taste better sweet.
There was a lucky draw giveaway freebie of a ScanPan pan, but no… neither of us won it. :\
All in all, I had an enjoyable time although I’d much prefer a smaller, more intimate group and more food consumption. It cost SG$70 to attend the event so naturally I had expected to be fed during the demonstration, but the itsy bitsy sampling portions just did not cut it.
Nonetheless, there’s always a new thing or two to learn from watching these cooking demonstrations. On this day, I learned how to debone and butterfly a whole fish! Now that’s something you need to watch and learn in real life.
The Cookery Connection schedule for the rest of the year:
20 Mar – Thai Cuisine
17 Apr – Italian Cuisine
15 May – Japanese Cuisine
19 Jun – Peranakan Cuisine
24 Jul – Sweet Temptation
21 Aug – Malay Cuisine
18 Sep – French Cuisine
23 Oct – Tea Time Snack
20 Nov – Festive Treats
Personally I don’t think I am going to attend anymore of these. However, I am interested in getting the recipe book published by Carousel, because the western dishes have an Asian twist in them and I think it’ll be fun to whip up some fusion flavours in the kitchen.
