Taste 2: The Monster From The Deep

Sjoe, it’s been a hectic week, and I think I can trace it right back to the moment it started spinning out of control. It was the moment I found myself hunkered over a 50 litre pot of mussels in the Sense of Taste kitchen at 11.30pm on a Tuesday night. It was scary. People were taking photos, their faces contorted with an emotion somewhere between wonder and horror. Never before had they seen a size 8 (okay, I’m a size 10 now) blonde polish off SO MUCH SEAFOOD.

I must say, Chef Peter outdid himself on the course last week. It really was an immersion in ‘Neptune’s treasure trove’ (and the amount of seafood we got to cook and consume would just about cover the course costs if you were served it up in a restaurant). We started with a smoked salmon trout salad (with fish from Three Streams in Franschhoek), then calamari in lemon butter sauce, which we prepared from scratch (it’s easier to peel a mini squid than you’d think), then a whole head-and-tail Thai style baked fish, then (yes, there’s more) the art of prepping and frying prawns, and, finally, the bathtub full of fragrant, steaming fresh mussels, by which time I was so drunk on the pleasures of frutti del mare that I lost all inhibition and simply stuck my head in the pot and drowned myself in their salty juices.

Needless to say, Week Two of my Sense of Taste course was just, well more: more cooking, more beer, more fun, more flaring like a pro (yeah!) Again, we had loads of time to be hands-on and really get a feel for what we were doing. This partly explains why we were there until nearly midnight, though kicking off the session with a wine tasting from Napier that none of us wanted to stop probably contributed (the Napier brandy distilled from chenin blanc is absolutely amazing, by the way: drink it neat, it’s like local-lekker cognac for about R220 a bottle). It really was a jam-packed evening that convinced me that at R1800 for four weeks, you’re not going to get better value from a cooking course anywhere else in Cape Town.

Tonight, we’ll be cooking Italian, and I will finally make gnocchi (yes, I know, can you believe I’ve never done that before?) Based on last week’s experience, I’d better wear my eating pants…