“Optimum nutritious cooking, with heart, passion & TEFAL Pan”
Oh well…. Now that I am into cooking healthy & tasty restaurant food, that has to do with the cooking demonstration workshop I have attended last Saturday. Thanks to the presenter, Tefal, with the great support of omy.sg.
As you probably know, the cooking workshop took place at Onaka restaurant, or called it the healing kitchen. Onaka, giving an impression that it is a Japanese restaurant, but to its regular diners, it’s already so well known that Onaka restaurant features not only Japanese cuisine, but all healthy & tasty multi-national dishes. And most of the time, the dishes are healthy creations of the chefs.
O.N.A.K.A., an acronym for, Optimum Nutrition And Kitchen Arts. It also means “stomach” in Japanese. Onaka Healing Kitchen was set up with a clear objective that is to educate the importance of achieving optimum health through nutrition, and of course, their tasty menu!
About the cooking workshop, two pleasant and amiable chefs, Chef Jason Vito and Chef Benson Tong, demonstrated healthy and delicious 3-course dishes with an objective to show us how Tefal Comfort Touch pans can be used to create restaurant standard menus easily, even at home! I believed that Tefal pan was chosen by the chefs, because the Tefal pan, with its health & environmental friendly mechanism (as well as its guaranteed ergonomic handle), matches Onaka’s healthy cooking objective. The advance intensium non-stick coating of the pan also enables their cooking to be done with less or no oil needed! That’s the main reason I agreed to join the workshop, and it wouldn’t be, if it is not Tefal. :)
Indeed, it was an eye-opening cooking demonstration. I learned some valuable cooking tips from the Chefs. Most of all, I learned that it could be so simple to make restaurant-standard 3-course meal, simply out of a pan! Let’s start..
Garlic Prawn on Toast
With an inviting environment of Onaka healing kitchen, Chef (Jason) Vito and Chef (Benson) Tong began the cooking demonstration with an unexpectedly appealing appetizer, the Garlic Prawns on Toast. I was told that this particular appetizer originated as a Spanish dish, but Chef Jason has added a twist of Asian flavour to it, by adding Kaffir lime leave. I loved his idea as its tinge of pleasant sourish taste turns the appetizer to an even more appetite whetting one.
If you ask me, I would tell you that I loved the in-house hand baked Rye bread the most. The toasted bread was placed in this dish with an obvious purpose, to soak up the flavourful gravy, and what…. Eat it all! Yes, the slightly crunched toast soaked in its olive oil gravy was so darn tasty….. Oh don’t forget to toast the bread on Tefal pan, without the need of oil, at all!
I don’t even need the prawn now… all I want is just the bread with its tasty gravy. :)
After the appetizer and a short Q&A break, here comes the main course, the healthy vegetarian noodle dish. This is a vegetarian dish, for Zen vegetarian, pure vegan and who doesn’t take garlic and onion, I was informed. Yes, no addition of garlic and whatsoever, just simple few healthy ingredients to make a super-licious Soba noodle.
Simple but satisfying noodle dish with the roasted mushrooms which were not over-whelmed with its strong mushroom scent (there is a trick to it which I would reveal in my recipe post next)… Even the savoury noodle sauce (”Umami“) was wiped out! Ya, it wasn’t too salty, just perfectly fine for the palate. Healthy, low-fat and tasty warm Soba dish.
Roasted Mushroom Soba
You really do not need thousand and one things to make super-tasty restaurant food, seriously. You could not imagine how tasty this Soba would be, until you try it yourself!
Alright, it is pretty much satisfactory, by now. However, don’t skip this! The very last but most important course to a dessert lover, like me. I couldn’t wait any longer for this lusciously home-tasted restaurant standard dessert! See how simple to make this….
Chef wanted to make a fluffy pancake. So, he added extra amount of baking soda. Yes, fluffly pancake is good as it goes very well with the deliberately-chunked roasted pumpkin, just to satisfy your palate by maximising the mouth feel with its excellent food texture. And of course, their homemade banana ice cream adds a plus point to this dessert. The ice-cream was pre-made before the workshop, and hence, I wouldn’t know the recipe, so sad. However, if you trust my taste, go visit Onaka and they do serve it in their menu.
Roasted (Butternut Squash) Pumpkin Pancake with Banana Ice Cream
The above menus can be found in their restaurant. Or, Chefs would tailor-make whatever healthy menu you like, just tell them!
Can’t believe your own eyes? Ya, one pan cooks 3 courses, by restaurant chefs. That’s my favourite, Tefal. I don’t need thousand and one excuses to dispose my so-called expensively superior non-stick frying pan, just to get myself the Tefal Comfort Touch pan. And, I have two, now!
If you wish to make these at home, go grab the Tefal Comfort Touch cookware (for optimum cooking) now, and wait for my recipe posts in My Wok Life very soon!
Nonetheless, I will be posting my recipe creation using the Tefal pan here in this blog, in no time!