Cooking Class - Handmade Chocolate and Perfect Pots de Crème in San Francisco

Shortly after our first cooking lesson, Chef Neelam contacted me for a second cooking lesson since it was purchased for my best friend Angie's birthday gift. I was truly excited to take her up on her offer! Chef Neelam drove out to Angie's home in Walnut Creek to teach us a four course Ayurvedic Indian meal. We greeted her at the door and welcomed Chef Neelam and her grocery bags full of organic vegetables, lentils and authentic Indian spices. We started promptly and Chef Neelam handed both of us recipes on what we were planning to make for our evening meal. Exciting! We got those recipes to keep. We started by making homemade ghee. Chef Neelam showed us how simple it was to make on the stovetop. It was the base for the other recipes. Wonderful first lesson! While the ghee was being created on the stove, Chef Neelam got to instructing me on chopping up carrots that was going to get tossed with organic peas and tofu to make a veggie curry dish. Angie got to chopping up the rapini and garden-grown-collard-greens into these beautiful ribbons that resembled long spaghetti strands. Those were being made into a dark leafy greens sabzi. We loved being guided by Chef Neelam....waiting for the popping sound of cumin seed as it was releasing its aroma in the pan.....to learning how to use a bench scraper properly. Angie and I stirred around the kitchen all night long with plenty of instruction from Chef Neelam. The Golden Porridge was next on the menu. Lentils rinsed three times and ready to be tossed with rice and spices in a pressure cooker! Dinner was ready and we sat at the table together and Chef Neelam decided we should each take one dish and serve it to the other two. Very sweet. Our tastebuds couldn't believe how amazing everything tasted! All of the dishes were flavorful and so well made through Chef Neelam's instruction. At the table, it was then like having a friend over, laughing, sharing stories, business ideas and simply getting to know one another. She is such a delight and very kind. Dessert were these unique indian donuts. Please ask Chef Neelam to teach this recipe to any of you in her future cooking lessons. The indian donuts were fried in the homemade ghee and served them with a cardamom and clove syrup. Seriously...those topped off the meal perfectly! Double yum! The night eventually came to a close and we bid Chef Neelam adieu, but not without letting her know that we plan to get a larger group together and take another lesson again soon. Thank you Chef Neelam for a fantastic evening....you made Angie's birthday present from me, truly memorable and special.

Chef Neelam is an amazing person. She makes you feel at ease from the start with meditation and she has so much knowledge and wisdom to share. The food was amazing and the cooking was a lot of fun. I felt like the meditation beforehand improved my cooking performance.

We booked Chef Neelam's Seasonal Californian-Italian cooking class in Berkeley and had a blast. Neelam is patient, explains every step of the class and the end result of our work was delicious. Thank you Chef Neelam for the great class!

What a great experience. Enjoyed the learning and conversation. Laid back, flexible and yummy. We brought home food and feasted on it until it was gone. It was a fun 3 hours that I would be happy to experience again.

This was our first Indian cooking class. We booked it with Chef Neelam at her venue in Berkeley and really liked it. Thank you Chef Neelam for the amazing class!

Thank you Chef Neelam! We really enjoyed the Indian cooking class and the dosas were just delicious!

We had a great time learning about the techniques of dosas and mindful, high prana cooking with Neelam. Our class felt more like cooking with a knowledgeable friend than with an instructor; we appreciated Neelam's flexibility and dedication to crafting an experience that interested us most.

I learned so much from Neelam, not only about dosa-making but also about meditation. We started off with some meditation exercises to prepare ourselves for cooking. It was such a great experience and I really felt so much more relaxed! The dosas were outstanding too. I loved the sweet potato filling and the different types of chutneys.

Chef was very nice, seemed slightly disorganized and did not know her own equipment which caused mozzarella to fail and left trying to save cheese by making it into a different kind, Dishes in sink from different class from day before, area very small, Extreme waste of money for what it costs and what we actually ate and what we learned which was how to not make mozzarella.