Topic: 7 Week BIR Course - What would you include?

[bmouthboyo]

As a little community help at my local youth centre I will hopefully running a short 7 week course that I have pitched as 'Curry Club' and will be teaching 12 to 18 year olds how the basics I learnt of BIR cooking. I am no expert by any means but thought it might be a fun thing to try with a group of upto 10 people, working in pairs.

I hope to go over creating a base gravy, the different spice mix's, the main dishes and the fundamentals of cooking BIR curry. This is no expert class by any stretch of the imagination so I do not need to worry about too finer details.

I was wondering if you guys could recommend any pointers on what might be good ideas to cover over the 7, 45minute sessions.

So far my initial outline would be:

• Familiarise with different spices, Spice mixes / massalas, ingredients used etc.
• Base gravies, the main BIR dishes
• Releasing oils in spices, burner control, preparing ingredients
• Cooking main dishes (Korma, Madras, Pathia, Vindaloo, Jalfrezi)
• Experimenting with base / dishes
• Side dishes (Alou Gobi, Dhals, Roti)

Unfortunately all we have access to are portable burners. No ovens or microwave.

Any help much appreciated, Cheers.

[Peripatetic Phil]

I think you should include pulao rice, which many (perhaps most) will regard as the standard accompaniment, and also include a small selection of side dishes such as onion salad, mango chutney and a hot pickle such as mango, lime, chilli or mixed.  Also well worth demonstrating how to cook poppadum without burning them (use TRS or Rajah Madras plain poppadums ; far easier than the thinner, more widely available ones. although if you can demonstrate how to cook masala poppadum successfully, so much the better).

** Phil.

[Stephen Lindsay]

You could also think about structuring your meetings along the lines of cookery book chapters - e.g. starters, base gravy, main courses, side dishes, and even puddings if you wish to go that far.

[natterjak]

All sounds a bit advanced for that age group to me - hope I'm not underestimating them, but you might want to keep it simple.

[Gav Iscon]

Give them a copy of Meggeths book.
http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,12724.0.html

Its free and a good starting point.

[JerryM]

quite a challenge and very brave.

they need to do rather than listen would be my no 1 ie feel they can make mistakes

they also live by electronic gadgets - i would select vid from youtube and get them to replicate it themselves. h4ppy-chris probably has the best overall selection (i've more vid from him on my little ipod touch than by anyone else)

time is going to be against - the 45 min slot not the overall. some advance prep going to be needed ie part cook base etc. i would leave meat out.

probably need some rule to effect a pause when needed to filter learning across all the groups as things go wrong (as each group hits pitfalls).

for me you know yourself what they need to learn - don't be too ambitious though. only joking but a 2nd course maybe. rome not built in a day.

very best wishes it's a lovely offering

[natterjak]

Hi Jerry, how do you save YouTube videos onto your iPod?

[loveitspicy]

Onion bhajis where they can get their hands in the mix and make the balls etc - not sure about the frying bit you may have to do that - get them to make up the mint sauce etc yogurt milk stir finger in taste testing.... etc

best, Rich

[Garp]

H4ppy Naans?

[sp]

I run a similar event at the secondary school I work at as part of a yearly thing called "activity days" - it's to give the younger first and second year pupils something different to do while the older ones are away on study leave before the exams.  I ran it for the first time last year and it was very oversubscribed as a one day event with 30 pupils, it was a lot to get through in a day - I covered pakoras, base, pilau rice, naans, chicken tikka masala and poppadoms, using C2Go recipes as a starting point.

This year I'm making it more manageable by doing it over two days and reducing the numbers with 10 pupils each day, and plan to use the glasgow recipes as a reference and cover the same sort of things but scale it right down so they each make base sauce and pilau rather than watch me do it then dish it out to them to use, as it can get a bit boring watching someone else cook and prattle on.

Having a word at your local college or place that does evening classes to see what kind of cookery classes they offer, and try and get a breakdown of what they cover and when - it could be useful to you when working out timings and expectations?