Looking at cooking schools? Here's a taste of one

Each recipe at the workshop is prefaced with an in-depth demonstration and tutorial, before participants move on to cooking the dishes themselves. Photos: The Star/Sam Tham

I am hovering over a razor clam, making slow, incisive cuts at precise points the way I have just been taught to do (although the person who taught me did it 90% faster). “You can go a leetle faster,” says culinary instructor Chef Sylvain Dubreau, his thick French accent making everything seem far more foreign and incomprehensible.

The fish-out-of-water feelings I am having are amplified a “leetle” by the fact that I’ve been thrown into totally foreign territory – the commercial-looking kitchen of the Le Cordon Bleu Malaysia.