Cooking class today at the Yangshuo Cooking School with Chinese cook Sophie. First to the market to get our ingredients. There were 4 of us in the class with two others from Paris. We did see some chooks in the market but declined to see other live animals. So we stuck to checking out the local vegetables. Then it was off to cooking school. We made steamed stuffed vegetables (mushroom, tofu and melon stuffed with minced pork), eggplant Yangshuo style (using black bean and chilli paste), beer fish (using cat fish), chicken with cashew nuts and green vegetables with garlic. We have noticed here that if we try to order bok choy in restaurants no one knows the name so we just order green vegetables now and mostly we get bokchoy (although once it was lettuce). It was fun cooking and I realised how much I miss it when travelling. We had the food we cooked for lunch.
ducks at the market
dried foods
green vegetables – yum
mushrooms
my work bench
Paul cooking
Speaking of food, I have noticed some unusual items on various menus (well unusual for me anyway, not for Chinese people I guess). Some I recall are: bee larvae, caterpillar, frog cake, chicken feet, pig ear, snake wine. Today we saw octopus which had been grilled on a stick which looked good.
octopus on sticks
It has been raining today and was a good day to do cooking. After the class, we went back to West Street to have cappucino’s and do some bargaining for items which we have seen. It can be amazing how much a price can fall. We are not good at bargaining but try to at least get a price which we think is reasonable.
