Tim Sum Class at Creative Culinaire

It's the Saturday but I woke up bright and early and made my way to Creative Culinaire to attend a Tim Sum class from 8.30am to 1pm. The hands-on class was taught by Chef Yeo Poh Soon, who has 20 years of experience in Tim Sum restaurants and has headed the kitchens of Crystal Jade, Tung Lok, and Spring Court.

Recipes included:

• Flaky Egg Tart - I love the Chinese type of egg tarts and have always wanted to learn how to make the flaky, 1000-layer skin and the silky smooth egg filling.
• Savoury Dumplings (Hum Swee Kok) - Dumplings wrapped in chicken and deep fried. Didn't have much impression about this tim sum as I hardly order it.
• Pan-fried Vegetable/Meat Pau (Shen Jian Chye Rou Pau) - Vegetable and meat filling wrapped in little ‘paos’ and then pan-fried.

Participants were paired and watched demo of the recipes by Chef Yeo before proceeding to make our own.
Pan-fried Vegetable/Meat Pau (Shen Jian Chye Rou Pau)

The dough making process looked quite manageable, and can even be eaten on its own when steamed as mantou. Filling was straightforward as well. For me, the most tricky part was the wrapping of the pau. I couldn't catch the gist of the wrapping at all and my pau turned out real ugly. LOL.

Anyway, after wrapping, steam for 5 mins, then panfried the bottom of the pau till golden brown.

Chef Yeo's paus were perfectly wrapped with at least 18-21 folds in less than 10 secs. Must have taken years of practice.

Freshly panfried pau. So yummy! Crispy at the bottom and soft at the top; fillings were delish and not oily at all.

Flaky Egg Tart

The recipe is really tough! The skin consists of Outer Skin and Inner Skin. To achieve the flakiness, the outer and inner skins must be rolled, beaten and folded carefully in swift motions as the outer skin melts quite quickly. Every step is crucial to the success of the egg tarts, from folding the skin, shaping, moulding, making the filling to baking process. Now I appreciate the flaky egg tarts sold at restaurant even more. Really not sure whether I could attempt this at home because it is really quite tedious.

Chef Yeo's egg tarts looked pretty and tasted really good. Egg filling was tender and not too sweet. Skin was flaky, soft and texture was even.

My partner and I had some trouble with rolling and folding the outer and inner skin as the outer skin was melting and sticking to the rolling pin.My ugly looking flaky egg tarts. The skin turned out uneven and hard as we didn't beat and fold the skin well enough.

Savoury Dumplings (Hum Swee Kok)

Didn't have time to make this as we ran out of time. Only saw demo by Chef Yeo.

The Tim Sum Class was interesting, had chance to learn something different from Shermay's Cooking School. But felt that to demo and hands-on for 3 recipes was a little too rush. Everyone had to scramble for ingredients, steamer, oven, sinks etc. Well, I am tempted to try the recipes, especially the egg tarts, but given the tedious process, likely to put this off for now.

Creative Culinaire The School Pte Ltd
Address: Eng Hoon Mansion #01-03/04, 17 Eng Hoon Street, Singapore 169767
Tel: 63241663
Fax: 63249490
Email: j.jireh@creativeculinaire.com
Website: http://www.creativeculinaire.com/