Sick of the usual corporate teambuilding events at Outward Bound School and the likes? Next time, maybe you can convince your company to go for a cooking class as a teambuilding activity. Yes, you read it correct–cooking class!
On Friday, 13 colleagues and I went for a corporate cooking class that was conducted by this lady called Ruxqana who’s a self-taught chef. She conducts cooking classes as teambuilding events and she conducts the classes in various venues like Pulau Ubin, a farm in Lim Chu Kang, at her own home or at her friend’s home. More information can be found on her website.
We went to her friend’s place in Siglap for our teambuilding event. Fourteen of us were divided into four groups. My group was in charge of making the cauliflower soup. But before we started, we were taught to make some Vietnamese rice paper rolls as a snack for ourselves before we started preparing dinner.
Other groups were in charge of making a herb baked chicken, aubergine and cucumber salad, prawn & mango curry, and vegetarian green curry for the mains. For dessert, each group had to make our own brownie.
All the dishes turned out very well. Ruxqana’s recipes made use of a lot of fresh herbs and spices. The curry pastes were made from scratch and even the cauliflower soup I made had fresh pepper corns and freshly grated nutmeg. Both of which added great taste to the soup. The cauliflower soup is so simple to make and so delicious and healthy! I’m going to try it again one day!
At the end of the day, we all sat down to dinner and ate the dishes we had prepared. The basmati rice which Ruqxana had prepared earlier was extremely fragrant and went well with the dishes.
It’s such a brilliant idea. It gets people working together, everyone’s relaxed and you can bond over food. Definitely something I’d like to do again! Anyway, here are some pics from the cooking class.


The cauliflower soup. The vegetables, consisting of cauliflower, leek, celery, big onions, garlic, green chilli and potatoes, are first chopped into small pieces. They are then fried. Then water and vegetable stock are added and the vegetablels are left to cook till soft. After that, the vegetables are left to cool. When it is cool, the vegetables are put into a blender. It is then blended till it comes like a puree. It’s creamy without the cream!


Prawn & Mango Curry


One of the three herb baked chickens we had. This was really yummy ‘cos the marinade contained lots of lemongrass and basil. The stuffing contained chopped lemongrass, basil, coriander leaves, garlic and tumeric.


The vegetarian green curry which contained tofu, shiitake mushrooms and green beans.