Alfred Prasad at Jeremy Pang's School of Wok

It being an evening class, the order of events was well balanced to ensure we remained focused (and the welcome drinks didn't go to our heads too much). After a quick introduction to precision cuts we diced and julienned ginger and chilli to make a kachumber salad before learning the dark arts of dumpling making. With the whole group at work folding momos – a fibre optic engineer from east London proved startlingly adept at this for a first timer – we had soon produced an enormous pile of them, half of which were removed and swiftly returned, deep fried, by cook school staff. It felt gratifying tucking into something we'd just made ourselves, and while I dripped hot oil down my sleeve several times in my haste to eat them fresh off the plate this hasn't put me off and I'll definitely be adding dumplings to my culinary repertoire.

After this quick break we were put to work again, cooking off sago for our desserts and layering it with chia seeds, coconut milk and rose-soaked water chestnuts before gathering round to watch Alfred demonstrate the main course. A friendly and approachable man, it had been easy up until that point to forget Alfred's illustrious career as a Michelin-starred chef. To have a chef at his level guide you through every stage of a recipe, giving insight into the historical context of the ingredients in Indian cooking and answering all our questions along the way, felt like a real privilege – not to mention a godsend for all future dinner parties.

The recipe we were preparing was Fish moilee, made with fat, juicy sea bass fillets. To show us two different preparations of the dish Alfred prepared his moilee as a stew, cooking the fillets in the coconut milk sauce, while we were instructed to pan-fry the fillets separately which results in a slightly swankier looking dish – ideal for entertaining. In pairs we scuttled off to our stations to try it for ourselves, and with Eliot on sea bass duty ('this fish is going to be shit-hot', he promised) I was in charge of putting together the sauce. It was, actually, incredibly easy, with the dazzling, complex flavour of the finished dish belying how few ingredients went into making it.