RockSugar Cooking Class Review

For this class, the menu featured bahn xeo or Vietnamese crepes, lemongrass shrimp cakes with chili sauce, stir fry vegetables, Vietnamese coffee and a Vietnamese snow cone. It was quite a way to start a Saturday morning, especially since each dish was accompanied with a wine pairing. Considering the plentiful fodder and beverages, along with the experience and interaction with Chef Mohan, the $75 class fee is an educational treat for anyone who appreciates food and would like a lesson in the kitchen or two. Every attendee was sent home with the recipes from the class along with a stainless steel coffee strainer to make the classic Vietnamese drink at home.

Chef Mohan is enthusiastic about food and eager to share his knowledge. He gives us tips on where to get supplies and his choices for certain ingredients. As he instructs a guest to chop green beans for the shrimp cakes, he tells us, “Asian cooking is lots of knife work, but the cooking process is quick - usually in one pot. There are lots of components but it’s easy to prepare. All of these dishes you can make at home.”

The green beans were folded into a mixture that consisted of shrimp, lemongrass, green onion, kafir lime leaves, Thai basil and cilantro, then formed into patties and pan fried in canola oil. Keep in mind, most of the ingredients have already been prepared, but the whole process took about 15 minutes. The smell is intoxicating. When the cakes arrive at the table for us to eat, they are crisp on the outside, moist and flavorful inside.

Mohan was trained in the classic French tradition, but he eventually returned to his Asian roots for its use of contrasts in flavors, texture, colors and temperature. He formerly served at Spice Market, Tabla and Blue Hill in New York City and it was at Blue Hill that Mohan credits Chef Dan Barber with teaching him about sustainable farming and cooking -- something he tries to incorporate as much as possible with RockSugar’s offerings. He points out that the Chinese eggplant he is chopping for the stir fry dish comes from a farm in Ventura. “You need to respect what you’re cooking, where it’s from, and be conscious of not wasting food,” he says.

When he’s not working, Chef Mohan enjoys eating light like a salad from Tender Greens that he finds are easy and fresh. For Asian cuisine he recommends Tasty Gardens in Alhambra as a favorite along with Lee Kam Kee for their Dungeness crab dish.

The real crowd-pleaser of the whole class is the Vietnamese snow cone. Mohan wheels out an old-fashioned hand cranked ice crusher to whittle down a block of ice. It’s not the finely ground ice that many are familiar with, but a much coarser grind which is shaped into a cone and wrapped with a banana leaf. The ice is set in a mixture of lychee fruit, pineapple, mango, palm seeds, red beans and jackfruit, then topped with a syrupy concoction of sweet coconut cream that has been simmered with pandan leaves, vanilla bean, sugar and salt. The snow cone is sweet, crunchy, chewy and refreshing - something most of the class has not experienced before. Several people recommend that he add it to the RockSugar dessert menu.

“This is a lot of fun for me,” Mohan explains. “I get to know the restaurant guests who come to RockSugar and I get feedback on our food. At times I can be in my little shell away from the customers, so I enjoy these classes because I can always learn what is going on and get ideas.”

Up next in the cooking class series, the chef brings the famous street foods of his native country into the kitchen with Singapore Chili Shrimp (Mohan’s twist on Singapore’s national dish, chili crab), Newton Circus Baked Chilean Sea Bass, sweet root vegetables cooked in coconut milk and pulled milk tea.

Flavors of Southeast Asia Cooking Class with Chef Mohan Ismail
RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen @ Westfield Century City
10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 654 Los Angeles
(310) 552-9988