Cordon bleu Poppy Agha

Embracing one’s culture and traditions is the corner stone to a successful career in the culinary world - this was the first lesson of our first class at PCI. Chef Amina Agha's (also popularly known as Poppy) new venture to personally train cooking enthusiast had my hair flip-flopping since the news first hit the web. In all my excitement I got my self enrolled for the first day, first class at PCI.

Like a primary kid excited for first day of school after a long summer, I couldn't wait for the night to pass and meet Poppy. Unlike the kid that wishes for the winter break to magically begin right after the second day of school, I could barely hold my excitement for my next class.

I was pleasantly greeted by Poppy as I entered. Expecting a crowd of students I found myself, Poppy and Niha (my only classmate) in a commercially set kitchen by ourselves. Now, that was a well thought decision taken by Poppy with just the two of us to be taught, each of us got just the right amount of attention that we needed. We started of with myths and facts about cooking and learnt a few hyped fancy french words used in the kitchen today, which I then learnt that those fancy words are actually a part of  our general English conversations. We went on to cutting vegetables and their techniques (second day since my class, I'm exactly like Julia child's scene from the movie Julie and Julia...cutting a dozen onions to get it right in my next class) next was the white sauce that was fused up with Cumin seeds (Zeera) and Mustard seeds, which had me in doubts for a moment until it hit my taste buds wanting for more and more. At the end we worked with chicken, ridiculously easy techniques to end up with a crisp brown layer on the evenly cooked chicken stuffed with basics to spice it up, plated with  the delicious basic white sauce that we fused up with just two spices, fine chopped and fried vegetables. We individually set our plates to test our own creativity. Picture of my first plate:

Finally, we sat with our plates and with me starving; I was the first to clean up my dish while we chatted for a while and got to know each other. It was truly a pleasant first experience, not just the delicious meals we cooked or the simple yet important techniques we learnt in our very first class but the comfort that we felt in class with Poppy. This was the highlight of the day. She's not only a great chef but also a lot of fun and comfortable to work with whether you're striving for professionalism or just learning to make appetizing meals for  your family members.

I'll be updating my class experiences with all my wonders, blunders and recipes as I go on.

                                                              -A-