Learning To Cook Like I’m On Masterchef

Last night Handpicked Media and Oral B invited me along to Cookery School on Little Portland street for a cook along lesson with Masterchef winner Tim Anderson and to hear all about their new toothpaste: Oral B Pro Expert. I was very excited about this event, in case you have not realised this yet I absolutely adore food and cooking, and it was a really great experience. 

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It actually made me consider going to cooking classes for some of the more complicated techniques that I can’t teach myself as well out of books. 

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I was a bit apprehensive about some of the food we were going to be cooking. Tim spent a lot of time in Japan and when I got there I saw that there was a lot of raw fish, I am really not that much of a sushi fan to be honest!

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Working in pairs (I worked with the lovely Alexandra, the PR co-ordinator over at HerUni), we started to prepare a simple Sashimi with Passion Fruit Foam and Wasabi Tsuyu Granita. 

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It was actually pretty easy to put together. The passion fruit foam smelt (and later tasted) amazing, but the whole way through I was still rather apprehensive about trying the raw fish that I was sure that I would not like. 

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I’ll try anything, and the tuna turned out to be rather meaty and not too bad, though I don’t think I will be revisiting sushi again, as I also was not a fan of the seaweed. It was interesting to learn about the different flavours and how they went together though. 

While we ate out first course a scientist from Oral B explained to us what the acids we were eating in our foods was doing to our teeth. It was pretty scary to hear, and how much detrimental acid is in almost everything we eat and drink, not just in things that we think would be bad for our teeth like sugar, red wine and coffee.

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Next we made an absolutely delicious Indian designed dish, Hen’s Nest of Tea-Stained Egg, Leek Bhaji and Chana Masala Puree. The puree we made out of chickpeas and spices, the eggs were soaked in tea and the crispy nest twigs were made out of julienne leeks in a spiced batter deep fried in a pan of oil. It was absolutely delicious, and I will be making it again, maybe for a course at another dinner party?

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While we tucked into this dish we were told all about Oral B Pro Expert toothpaste and shown some very scary lab experiment videos about erosion on an iPad. 

Did you know that the Americans actually have better teeth than we do, even with their total sugar soda and candy overload? This is because the technologies they have in their toothpaste (which is in Oral B Pro Expert) that they’ve had for much longer than we have are much better than ours, and they also drink loads of soda with ice which dilutes the damage and with a straw that helps bypass the teeth? I was also happy to hear that this toothpaste is very whitening, because it not only helps prevent staining like other whitening toothpastes, but also helps combat existing stains. 

I sat there thinking that after scaring us about our teeth they better be giving us a tube of the toothpaste to take away with us and brush our teeth with when we got home, thank god they did – I’ll let you know how I get on with it! 

What do you think of these dishes? Do you think I should try making the hens nest again?

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