Day 13

Today was Indian food (dry heat), using the Tandoor Oven. 2 types of bread, 1 tandoori chicken. The chef instructor also cooked us a lentil stew (not in instruction) to complete the meal. A tandoor oven in full steam is 500C in temp.

It was actually really quite relaxed. Partly because I think the oven is a dangerous piece of equipment so the chef instructor paced us through it deliberately. Quite fun - I got to clean the (really) hot oven surfaces with a wet towel, shape bread dough, slap the bread in the oven, extract the bread, and do the chicken tandoor.

By the way, our chef instructor is an Indian Chinese!! By that, I mean that he is a Chinese by race, but he was brought up in Calcutta Chinatown (yes there is a Chinatown every where). It sounds slightly weird to hear Indian style English coming from his mouth.

Got a lot of photos today, because the class created a whatsapp group.

Here's a bunch of today's photos (a few are captioned).

A view inside the tandoor. Up to 500C at full operation.

soak the cloth in salted water and then reach into the oven to clean the sides (charred bits of food on the side will cause the bread not to stick so have to clean). heh I was the only student trying this out. Later the instructor showed a better way by lengthening the towel and then whirling it from just above the oven and scraping the sides by that action.

This is the "bread pan" used to apply the dough to the side of the oven.

Some a reddish due to more chili powder added.

Trying to shape the dough right.

sadly some of our naans dropped on the floor of the oven - due to improper application of the bread (in some cases due to skittish hands from people fearing the heat - it really is quite hot).

Our 2 youngest classmates.

Uh... my thumb?

eating our own product.