Fiscal Policy Directorate Retreat

For Part 2 of my directorate retreat, I organised a cooking class for them. It was held at at-sunrice, a culinary academy on top of Fort Canning Park.

Before cooking class began, we went for a spice hunt around the spice garden at Fort Canning Park. Brings back fond memories of the orienteering race around MIT!

It was an amateur version of Iron chef, and our directorate of 21 people were split into 5 teams for a cooking competition. Our menu consisted of Chilli Crab, Popiah and Laksa, and Popiah was the competition dish. It was fun because we did not use Prima Packs! We actually had to pound our own spices and make our own laksa paste and chilli crab paste from scratch. What a change!

Having had some practice with wrapping Popiah (after undergoing intensive training at the Lynneth academy in Boston), my team (Team Onion!) came out tops. Our popiahs were judged the best wrapped, and our plating and garnishing the most attractive. We had to accompany our plating with a 2 minute advertising pitch on why our dish was the best. Hehe this was perhaps the most hilarious part of the session.

Pictures here:

Locating the 10 spices in the Spice Garden.... Tamarind, basil, clove, Traveller's Palm, cotton and more!

What happens when you have four men trying to cook laksa paste?

The Winning Popiah Dish!! - Isn't the Tomato Rose pretty? :P

Everyone enjoying their dinner al fresco on top of Fort Canning

Team Onion! (Yes we had groups named after spices.

There was Pepper, Cumin, Onion, Chilli and Basil)