What if I were to tell you that you can have restaurant quality seafood dishes, made with the freshest ingredients — by you — in your very own kitchen each weekend?

Sydney Seafood School is making it possible. Orange residents now take part in their weekly virtual cooking classes, where for an affordable $45 you get all the ingredients and all the instruction you need prepare a delicious seafood feast for two.

For 30 years Sydney Seafood School has been offering fun, hands-on cooking classes out of their home at Sydney Fish Market. More than 12,000 people take part each year, but of course this year it has been very different.

With face to face classes impossible due to social distancing requirements, Sydney Seafood School has gone online, bringing their 30 years of cooking class expertise into the virtual realm.

“The idea is it is essentially the same as being at one of our cooking classes here, except you are doing it in your own kitchen at home,” said Roberta Muir, Manager of Sydney Seafood School.

“We have a mission to inspire everyone to eat well, together. And now we can do that whether they come to us or we go to them.”

The virtual cooking classes, known as SSS@Home, were initially trialled with pick-up or local delivery from the Fish Market, but now Orange is among a select few regional centres to be able to join in the program.

“We started this partnership with Sydney Fresh Seafood, who are the seafood outlet within some Harris Farm stores, and that it how we've managed to come to Orange,” said Roberta.

So here is how it works: each weekly meal kit can be picked up from Harris Farm on Fridays, and it includes all the ingredients you need to need to make the chosen dish, with a detailed written recipe and a link to an instructional video talking you through the cook.

I actually took part in last week’s cooking class, in which I cleaned and sectioned Blue swimmer crabs for a Singaporean Black Pepper Crab — something far outside my comfort zone. But the kit contained everything I needed (apart from a teaspoon of sugar) and I found the instructional video well put together and easy to follow. The recipe even included plenty of photographs, making the cook quite straight forward for something I would not have attempted otherwise.

And more importantly the results were delicious!

“It's all about the quality of the ingredients,” said Roberta. “We use the best saffron, the best rice, Pepe Saya Butter, these kits have the same quality ingredients that we use in our face to face classes then there's a beautiful artisan Australia chocolate bar just for something sweet to share at the end, which is what we do in our classes as well.”

While these classes were initially a way of dealing with the coronavirus shut down, the good news is they are here to stay.

“The feedback has been amazing. We have had a lot of people say please keep doing this, especially from regional areas like Orange, so definitely,” said Roberta.

From 85 meal kits in their first week, more 700 went out on Friday, she said.

“There are some people who are going to make this a Friday night tradition and get it every week.”

Meal kits can be ordered from each Monday for $45 on a first-in, first served basis and they will be delivered to Harris Farm on Friday.

Or, if you would like to make sure you don’t miss out, you can purchase a four-week loyalty pack for $180 a few days earlier on Fridays, ensuring you will receive weekly seafood dishes for the next month.

And as a special treat to our Orange City Life Readers the next four-week loyalty pack can be ordered right now Here!

Here’s what is on the menu for the next four weeks.

• 12 June: special guest chef Ajoy Joshi from Nilgiri’s in Cremorne teaches how to make a delicious prawn dish from Kerala, with green peppercorn and curry leaf, and an eggplant yoghurt roast cumin raita to accompany it.

• 19 June: learn to cook an array of seafood tapas, including the best garlic prawns you’ve ever tasted.

• 26 June: Giovanni Pilu from Pilu at Freshwater will teach you to make a delicious seafood meal with the flavour of his homeland on the island of Sardinia

• 3 July: celebrate the Fourth of July New Orleans-style with Cajun-blackened fish and delicious coleslaw, plus oyster po’boys with secret spicy remoulade sauce.