Spirit House Cooking School

Spirit House Cooking School
Address: 20 Ninderry Road, Yandina QLD 4561
Telephone: (07) 5446 8977

Spirit House Cooking School

Dedicated to Ms22 for taking me along as part of a birthday gift

We had a wonderful time together

The Spirit House Cooking School is in Yandina, which is a small town about 90 minutes drive north of Brisbane.

I want to say, over the last four or so years, I’ve been chatting with my middle daughter about doing a cooking class together.

Ms22 has a passion for making and decorating cakes. She has a side hustle thing making and decorating cakes for friends and other people who hear about her by word of mouth. On average, each week, she is making and decorating a cake for someone’s birthday, engagement, Christening, or some other important life event. She’s even made me a birthday ice cream cake.

Postscript Trigger warning

Rant below

When I started writing this post the weather in Canberra was cold and dreary and I’d just had a colonoscopy the day before. I was feeling delicate. My anal sphincter was tender, I couldn’t fart with confidence, and my fingers were numb with cold. You’ll know when you get to the rant. Canberra residents especially will know.

Words started flowing and one thing leads to another. You may be surprised, I’m a resident of Canberra which is the Australian Capital Territory (the small territory). That said while being a native-born citizen of Australia, I identify first and foremost as a Queenslander and if I was going to identify as a Territorian it would be as a Northern Territorian (the big territory).

---

Connections

I hope every parent has a ‘thing’ they like to do with each of their children or a ‘thing’ which characterises their relationship. For Ms22 and me, it’s a common interest in cooking and eating. More so the cooking for her and the eating for me.

I try to visit my daughters and parents every couple of months. Sometimes, it stretches to three or four months, and sometimes, the gap between visits is as short as a month. That said, my visits are usually a flight from Canberra on a Friday evening and a return on the following Sunday afternoon. This doesn’t leave much time, and I like to make sure I do a few things with everyone.

Cooking classes on Saturdays used to clash with gymnastics training, and now they clash with work. It makes it almost impossible to do something like this together on one of my regular short visits.

One of the things I’ve started doing over the last few years has been to take a week’s leave over the first week of July to escape the Canberra winter and to give my skin an opportunity to get moist again. This year, Ms22 planned in advance and managed to find a cooking class we could do together that didn’t clash with her work schedule and which would fit in with my leave arrangements.

Cuisines

We looked at a few options including different cuisines. For me, I’m partial to uncomplicated relatively easy cooking which fits with my current dietary requirements. By that I mean, I’m a lazy cook and I’m hoping to eat more clean foods and less processed foods. I’m also partial to Asian cuisines, and by Asian, I mean South East Asian cooking.

Spirit House

The classes that stood out, especially based on the reviews were those held at the Spirit House Cooking School in Yandina. The Spirit House Restaurant has a reputation for Thai cuisine, although if you look at the menu, it covers more than Thai food and has strong elements of Indian and Chinese cuisines. Likewise, the Spirit House Cooking School is much more than a Thai cooking school.

What about the carbs?

Ms22 suggested we do the “dumplings and buns” class. My immediate reaction was mixed. Mixed in that I immediately thought YES! but soon after it was followed by the thought, “What about all those carbs?” The second thought was soon dismissed by overwhelming emotions knowing that I’d be spending time with Ms22 and cooking with her.

The classes start at 9.30 with a request that participants arrive at 9.15. That meant a pleasant drive with Ms22 and a need to ensure we could find somewhere for coffee before we arrived.

Coffee

Through some serendipity, and by serendipity, I mean confusion between me and Google Maps we stumbled upon Pioneer Coffee Roastery.

I had a really good flat white. The coffee was rich but not excessively strong. It was served with a chocolate-coated coffee bean which may have also helped me feel a bit euphoric. Whenever I’m away from Canberra I sleep poorly because I don’t travel with my CPAP machine.

Pioneer Coffee Roastery
Address: 41 Pioneer Rd, Yandina QLD 4561
Telephone: (07) 5446 8099

For readers from North America, a flat white is a coffee made with steam frothed milk which seems to be something impossible to find in your part of the world. I should qualify that, I know some places in North America are trying to cater for people with a different coffee palate, but the efforts I’ve tried never seem to hit the mark.

Don’t let Google Maps deceive you

The Spirit House Restaurant and Spirit House Cooking School is easily missed as you drive along School Road if you’re approaching using Google Maps because as you approach from along School Road, the voice emanating from the Google Maps app suggests you’ve reached your destination at the T-junction of School Road and Ninderry Road. Technically you have because at that point the restaurant and school are on your immediate right but you can’t see anything but trees. The driveway for the restaurant and school requires a right-hand turn onto Ninderry Road and if you’re like me and enjoy accelerating with vigour you could blink and miss the driveway.

On arriving, there is plenty of parking space and the environment of the restaurant and school is really very inviting. It’s leafy and green with water features on the grounds. The restaurant also houses a bar for patrons to enjoy the serene environment.

We found the entrance for the cooking school easily and on entering were greeted with a smile and asked to confirm our names. We were given a folder each which contained a black coloured Spirit House apron and a folio of recipes for our class.

As much as I’d love to share the recipes here, I’m anticipating I’d be breaching copyright because the recipes are from the many cookbooks which the Spirit House sells. That said, I doubt there’s a problem with me writing the names of the dishes we learnt about during the class.

I didn’t shoot many photographs because I was focussed on spending time with Ms22 and getting the most out of the class.

What to expect

Including Ms22 and me, we had thirteen participants and one instructor, namely, Kelly, who used to be the head chef for the Spirit House Restaurant. In addition, we had another chef from the restaurant there learning the ropes to become an instructor as well as a kitchen manager who works behind the scenes almost invisibly removing used and ‘dirty’ cooking implements so they can be cleaned and returned to the benches quickly.

Some of the other participants were local to the region while others were from other states.

Over the course of four and a half hours, we learnt many cooking skills, did some food preparation, and ate some really yummy dishes.

Knife skills

Amongst other things, I learnt some extra knife skills, a neat trick to make curly spring onion strings, how to make tamarind water, and some facts about woks.

I miss cooking with gas. In the small one-bedroom flat I rent, the stove is a ceramic topped electric unit. I almost never cook with it. I prefer a portable induction hob. I now only cook with one hob. I love my induction hob because it heats up a frypan or saucepan really quickly and gets almost the same amount of control I can achieve from gas. That said, with a basic and cheap wok which is made with thin steel, the metal gets hot quickly and cools quickly depending on the contact with a heat source. An induction hob is technically not a heat source and round-bottomed woks don’t really work very well because wok cooking involves not just the heat from flames at the centre of the “base”, but also the heat from the flames licking the sides of the wok and requires the balance of moving the wok with your non-dominant hand in and out of the flames as well as slanting the wok over the flames to heat specific areas all while using your wok shovel in your dominant hand.

Towards the end of the class, as the dishes are coming together, we all sit at the dining table and enjoy the starters. After some more cooking, we sit again and enjoy the main meal. The cost of the class includes wine, beer, cider, and soft drinks. A cocktail can also be purchased from the restaurant bar which by the time we sit for the main meal, is open.

Recommendation

I’d happily recommend the Spirit House Cooking School for anyone of any level of cooking skill. Check out the school’s website for the types of classes available. I can vouch for the quality of the instruction and the pleasant surrounds in which you will find yourself learning new skills and new knowledge.

Get ready for the rant…

The Spirit House Cooking School is an easy drive from Brisbane and if you’re not from Brisbane, it’s worth knowing that Yandina is on the Sunshine Coast of the greatest state of the greatest country. The Sunshine Coast has fantastic beaches as well as a hinterland filled with places worth visiting. If you’re into walking and hiking, there are the trails and climbs associated with the Glass House Mountains. There are some theme parks and zoological gardens (if that’s your thing) too.

Getting ranty

If you’re from interstate or overseas, Brisbane is a great ‘base’ for a visit to the Sunshine State. Better than Sydney or Melbourne, Brisbane has a temperate climate, friendly people, a pleasant attitude, and a laid back nature. It’s a really big country town with modern infrastructure and a state of the art technology focus, especially in the biotechnology fields. The University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology call Brisbane home. Unlike the other ‘country capital,’ namely, Canberra (where I reside), Brisbane gives you a sense of fun and excitement, vitality and vibrancy, freedom and opportunity, Brisbane unlike Canberra, doesn’t take itself too seriously. Best of all, Brisbane is an important feature of Queensland. Brisbane though doesn’t represent Queensland, it may be the capital city but it’s not Queensland. To get an idea of Queensland, you need to travel to other parts of the greatest state. Not just the surf cities and towns, and not just the coastal cities and towns, but also the hinterlands and places west of the Great Dividing Range.

So to be balanced, Brisbane has the worst roads in Australia. It’s shocking that the road structure is so appalling. If you own a car, passengers not from Brisbane sitting on the left will feel terror as the left side of the car slopes into the gutter. That said, while the roads in general in Canberra are good, the roads of the Northern Territory of Australia are the best. The thing that drags Canberra down is the appalling manner in which the ACT Government funds road repairs. The word permanent doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary. Pot holes reappear with monotonous regularity every time it drizzles let alone rains. I mean the Top End of Australia has proper rain, you know monsoonal rain, and the authorities have the competence to be able to repair roads properly.

End rant

[maxbutton id=”12″ url=”#photos” ] [maxbutton id=”11″ url=”#questions” ] [maxbutton id=”14″ ]

Yummy Lummy is not sponsored by anyone.

Photographs

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and then scroll through the photographs.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Questions and answers

What other classes does the Spirit House Cooking School have on offer?

If you go to the website you’ll be able to find not only the types of classes but the dates on which the classes will be held, as well as the prices.

Now that I’ve done one, I’d be tempted to drive up the night before and experience the restaurant, spend a night in Yandina or somewhere else close by on the great Sunshine Coast, get a surf in in the morning, buy a coffee from Pioneer Coffee Roastery, and then arrive for a class.

What was your favourite part of the class?

The eating I reckon. No seriously, it was spending valuable precious time with Ms22.

It is also an environment where photography and social media is encouraged. That said, I didn’t really shoot too many photographs. I was focussed on the class.

I did notice many of my classmates had their point and shoot cameras and smartphones out snapping photos and shooting short video clips.

What’s one thing you learnt that you’ll do again and again?

I learnt a neat trick with spring onion. With a sharp knife, run the tip of the blade up from the base to the tip from inside the green leaf (tube) of a spring onion. Roll it up from the base to the tip with the inside facing outside and press to form a square. Lay this on a cutting board and with a sharp nice slice ‘strings’ of spring onion. Pop that into ice water and watch the spring onion ‘strings’ curl to form spring onion ‘curls’ which you can use as an edible garnish.

Here’s a bonus tip. If you want to fry your own garlic slices, make sure you use a mandolin for uniform thickness and put them in tepid oil to start. Heat the oil up until it’s bubbling and allow the garlic to cook. Doing it this way avoids the oil ‘spitting’ and avoids burning the thin slivers of garlic.

[maxbutton id=”15″ ][maxbutton id=”16″ ][maxbutton id=”17″ ]

Final thoughts

• Have you ever taken a cooking class?
• What sort of cooking class would you like to take?
• Do you prefer cooking alone or with someone special?

Ms22 bought me a knife. Gee, it’s sharp.

• 

• 

• 

Sponsorship

Yummy Lummy has no sponsors but maintaining a blog isn’t free. If anyone or any company would like to contribute please contact me.