My Chinese Cooking Class

I have a student that I tutor in English a few times a week at my house. I taught her how to make brownies because her husband loves them, and in return she taught me how to make a traditional Chinese dish. I think I got the better end of that deal since we made brownies out of a box, and she taught me a complicated meal, but she was happy with the trade.

I don't remember the name of this dish, she couldn't find a good translation for it, but it was basically pork served over noodles. There was a lot of preparation involved. We had to chop everything up really tiny before we began. She kept joking that you have to wash a lot of dishes when you make Chinese food. She was right. Everything needed to be put aside in its own little bowl, just like they do on cooking shows. Usually I am way too lay to do this.

The pork was deep fried in a couple of Chinese sauces with some onion and ginger to flavor it. We boiled the purple leaves on the plate in the middle. It is something called toon. I had never heard of it before, but it is really popular in China in the spring. It had a strong flavor, but it smelled good and went well with the pork. It was fun to cook with her, but I will probably never make it on my own.


We boiled the noodles, although even that was complicated. To get the right texture we had to let the water boil, then add more cold water. Then let it boil again and add more cold water. We had to do that 4 times before she said the noodles tasted right.

We ate it by putting the pork over the noodles, then adding some of the boiled toon. We also had fresh thinly sliced cucumber to put on top. She even made me eat a fresh clove of garlic. (In the middle bowl with the cucumber.) Apparently thats normal here and they think it tastes good. She told me they usually eat it for dinner, not lunch because then they can go to bed without seeing people since their breath is so bad! I choked down one clove and brushed my teeth a couple times after she left. I don't think it helped and I will never do that again!

The dish was really good and I would love to eat it in a restaurant again, but I don't think I will try to recreate it on my own anytime soon. The problem I have with Chinese cooking is the amount of oil involved. When I dished out the pork I had to drain the oil off the top before adding it to my noodles. In a restaurant at least I don't have to see it and can pretend its not so oily!

Sarah also taught me how to make one of Nick's favorite Chinese dishes...egg and tomato. That was really simple and is something I will definitely make again sometime. No pictures of that dish though. It was really fun learning something new, even if I will stick to cooking western food most of the time.