On Monday night, the Arch team headed over to Soft Touch Arts’ new home on New Walk, for a team-building cooking class in their brand new kitchen.

We were effectively guinea pigs; the first group introduced to the kitchen to test the waters for Soft Touch, who hope to offer the team building exercise on a regular basis.

Phillip Sharpe, head chef at The White Peacock, was there to whip us into shape and extract our hidden culinary skills. The Asian-themed meal consisted of two elements, so we split into two teams, one concentrating on the spring roll & samosa starters, the other on the stir-fry main.

Chris Wigmore from Soft Touch Arts was there to lend a helping hand and navigate us around their brilliant kitchen, which was greatly appreciated. The new build was full of all the equipment and ingredients we required and more.

Phil was full of top tips on how to really bring out the flavour of our food. We learnt some handy new tricks, such as how to make pastry glue, and the best way to get seeds out of a chilli! Rolling the samosas and spring rolls was the fiddliest part, but also the most entertaining.

The concentration in the room was tangible, but everybody ended up doing a decent job, and the food was surprisingly good so maybe we’re chefs in the making after all!