Our First Cooking Class!

On Wednesday Matt and I attended our first ever cooking class at the Central Market Cooking School. The class we chose to take was Chinese Favorites. Matt and I, of course, love Asian food so we thought it would be great to learn how to make it ourselves. The menu included the following dishes:

• Curried Potstickers
• Egg Rolls
• Moo Shu Pork with Mandarin Pancakes
• Kung Pao Chicken
• Chinese Fried Rice

We began by dividing into groups and choosing our area of the kitchen. One Central Market chef per group helped to supervise and teach. Each group worked together to make each one of the dishes above, and not surprisingly Matt and I were the absolutely least experienced among the team. My favorite part of the night was when Matt was in charge of stir frying the ingredients for the egg rolls and he decided to throw a nice majority of the onions and peppers on the ground instead of in the wok. After that he insisted on becoming the sous-chef and decided to let one of the other women in our group handle the intense cooking. I followed suit.

The cooking class ended up being so much fun for several reasons:

1. We got to drink wine during the entire process. This was a good thing.
2. Everything was already cut up and measured out for each dish, so all we had to do was combine the ingredients to stir fry or fry them. Somehow I don't this accurately reflects all the actual time and effort that goes into making these dishes, but after we completed each one Matt and I each agreed we could totally do this at home.
3. There was someone there to clean up after any and every mess we made. If we were done with the dishes that held the ingredients someone immediately picked them up. If we had flour all over the counter it was cleaned as soon as we were done with the task at hand. I've decided this is the only way to cook.

I will say in the end Matt really liked the food we cooked. We were able to all sit down together and eat the fruits of our labor. I'm convinced he liked the food because by the time we sat down to eat it was around 8:30pm and after cooking for 2 hours we were starving. I on the other hand thought it was just OK. I had so much fun doing the cooking (see reasons why above), but I would still rather head to PF Changs if I had the choice. I'm sure this surprises no one.

All and all, I would definitely like to take another cooking course, I am now convinced it's the only way to cook!

Matt was definitely embarrassed when the chef took our picture for us. I told her I needed it for my blog. He reminded me again later how much of a dork I was for saying this out loud.