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| In the market with Chef Zhao |
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| A Black Silkie Chicken! |
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| Makin’ dumplings! |
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| Me and my dumpling! |
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| Perfect pleats! |
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| Our dumpling feast! |
As our month in China was, in great measure, a “foodie” trip for Chef Dan and I, I booked us a number of “food tours”, as well as two cooking classes. In my previous post on Shanghai I wrote about our Hand-Pulled and Shaved Noodle Class at Cook In Shanghai; in Beijing we took an excellent class with Chef Chao Zhao at the Beijing Cooking School (also known as the Hutong Cuisine Cooking School) to learn to make Chinese Dumplings, one of my all-time favorite foods! The school gives a number of excellent classes, and I’m only sorry we only had time to do one! When I made our reservation, I opted to add the Market Visit and Condiment Class to our lesson, so we would learn as much as possible, and I’m glad I did. After looking at lots of cooking classes online (basically every city and town in China has cooking classes and foodie tours!), and reading reviews, I chose this one, emailed Chef Zhou, and booked it online, paying a deposit via PayPal. The morning of the class we took a cab from our hotel (the totally fabulous, historic Beijing Hotel NUO, formerly Raffles), to the Hutong Cuisine Cooking School, and, thanks to the Chinese-language map Chef Zhou emailed me for the cab driver, (absolutely Essential in China, as basically no one outside the tourism industry speaks or reads English), we actually found it! 🙂 It was, like the Noodle Class in Shanghai, in an unmarked building; finding this one also took us through a maze of alleyways and through a courtyard, to a private residence deeply tucked into one of Beijing’s Hutongs (historic neighborhoods)! Four other foreigners turned up, as they had for the Shanghai cooking class, and apparently had no problem finding it, which again amazed us! The class was excellent and we learned a lot- we actually and really did learn to make Chinese Dumplings, and can now do this at the Elkhorn Inn! We first walked with Chef Zhou to the very calm, clean, and orderly indoor Chaonei South Market, and, as we walked around, Chef Zhou explained all the different veggies, fruits, meats, seafoods, nuts, tofu, noodles, etc., and I took 1000 photos!
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| Veggies in the market |
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| Chef Zhou and Lotus Root! |
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| Gorgeous fruits! |
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| Enjoying the live fish! |
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| Different kinds of special eggs! |
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| The famous Black Silkie Chickens! |
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| The Chaonei Market Logo |
Interestingly, EVERYTHING can be paid for using an iPhone- even in the markets! You simply scan the bar codes on display at every stall, and the money is sucked right out of your bank account! LOL
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| Beautiful fresh fruit… |
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| The luscious scent of garlic shoots… |
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| Chef Dan and the fish! |
In addition to all the gorgeous veggies and fruits, there was live fish for sale, freshly-baked breads and made-to-order noodles, all sorts of tofu, and a Muslim section for Halal meat. One of the most interesting things for me was to finally see the famed Black Chinese Chickens! The Black Silkie Chinese Chicken has black skin, bones, and even internal organs, and I have been DYING to try it!! According to the Chinese,
this fascinating, and naturally all-black chicken has medicinal value, and aids in several aspects of female sexuality… They’re considered a “super food”, and are also appreciated for their deep, gammy flavor. Called “wu gu ji” or “black-boned chicken”, the Black Silkie has been prized for its medicinal value since the seventh or eighth century. Chinese women consume it after they have given birth to get a boost of energy, but it’s also said to have a positive effect on the yin, blood, lungs, and stomach. It’s usually prepared by cooking it into an amber-colored broth laced with ginseng , dried wolfberries and jujubes. Another interesting thing about Black Silkies is their
high content of carnosine, a naturally occurring peptide which is sold as a dietary supplement to increase muscle mass, ward of the effects of aging, and alleviate diseases like diabetes or autism. Studies have shown the black chicken is one of the richest sources of carnosine… But w
e didn’t get taste it on this trip, so eating Black Chicken still remains on my “foodie bucket list”!
Chef Zhou shopped for some of the dumpling ingredients, and when we got back to the school’s professional kitchen, with its multiple stove-tops and big island, he taught or group to make 3 different kinds of dumplings: pan-fried dumplings with a pork/onion/ginger filling (ours), steamed dumplings with a scrambled egg/chive filling, and boiled dumplings, with a pork/fennel frond/ginger filling. We finely chopped the ginger and onion with our cleaver, and stirred it into the ground pork and seasonings with chopsticks in one direction only (this is key!), to create a smooth, paste-like consistency. I asked to try the Chinese Wine used in the fillings, as it’s different than the “Chinese Cooking Wine” we get in the USA which has salt in it and is Not drinkable; this was a lovely and very drinkable wine, similar to a dry sherry. We used a mixture of high and medium gluten flour to make the dumpling dough, kneading and then rolling the dough into a cylinder, and then dividing and cutting it into 16 pieces, making a half-turn of the roll before making each slice with the cleaver to create perfectly-shaped pieces.
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| The ball of dough, covered |
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| Marking and cutting… |
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| Tossing in flour… |
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| Rolling the dough into dumpling wrappers… |
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| Turn and roll… |
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| Chef Dan, cutting dumplings… |
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| 16 perfect dumplings, and a great cleaver… |
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| Our pork-ginger dumpling filling… |
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| Stirring the filling… |
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| Chef Dan, making dumpling filling |
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| A hot wok for scrambled eggs… |
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| Scrambling eggs in a wok… |
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| Adding the chives… |
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| Filling a dumpling with egg & chives… |
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| Folding and pleating… |
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| A finished dumpling! |
The couple making the steamed dumplings made its scrambled egg filling in two big, smoking woks, adding the finely chopped chives, and then whipping it about with their chopsticks.
Then we flattened each piece of dough into thin, palm-sized circles, using a turn-with-one-hand, roll-with-the-other technique and a wooden rolling bar to make them perfectly round and even.
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| Folding and pleating… |
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| A spoonful of filling… |
Holding the wrapper in the palm of one hand, we placed a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center, and then did the “pinches” of the dough around the filling that make the different pleats in each kind of dumpling. This is THE key thing to learn about dumpling-making, as each dumpling has its own special pleating technique! Our pan-fried dumplings entailed a pinch-and-cross-over technique, which I found rather complex, but after Chef Zhou (who has the patience of a saint LOL) personally walked me thru it at least 3 times(!) I actually “got” it- and made more than 20 really good-looking dumplings!! I got so adept at it, in fact, that Dan rolled and I pinched! After my total failure at making hand-pulled noodles in Shanghai, I was SO pleased with myself! LOL
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| A finished dumpling! |
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| Filling with pork & fennel |
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| And pleating… |
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| Dumpling Number 3! |
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| Me and my dumpling! |
Our pan-fried dumplings were browned in a large pan first, then cornstarch/flour water was added, and the pan was covered until the dumplings were cooked through. Then the pan of dumplings was topped with a plate, and the whole mass of them flipped over and onto the plate, beautiful brown-side up! NOW I know how that’s done!!
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| Adding the cornstarch liquid… |
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| Steaming ’til done… |
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| Dumplings, cooking! |
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| House-made pickles! |
The boiled dumplings were boiled several times, with cold water added by the cup three times and the pot brought back to boiling, until they were done, and the steamed dumplings were cooked in a layered steamer pot. Chef Zhou also made us a dish of crinkle-cut potatoes with their house-made chili oil and chili paste, and treated us to some delicious house-made pickles. Amazingly(!), all the dumplings were done at the same time, and we all sat down to our luncheon dumpling feast!
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| Our feast of dumplings! |
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| Hot, pan-fried dumplings and house-made chili dipping sauce! |
After lunch, when I could barely move (LOL), Chef Zhou did his“Condiment Class” for Dan and I, and we have now have the “inside info” on Chinese soy sauces, vinegars, and wine that we needed to make Chef Dan’s Chinese dishes at the Elkhorn Inn truly authentic! We were going to buy one of his gorgeous, hand made and numbered chef’s cleavers from Chengdu (see photo above), which were only 250 RMB (about $40), but he was afraid it might be confiscated from us at a train station or in an airport, so we didn’t… 🙁 We HIGHLY recommend taking this cooking class when you’re in Beijing- you CAN’T leave China without learning to make dumplings!!!
Next up: Fabulous Couture Hats in Beijing!
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