China's Kitchen

Today we had the first of four field trips with our Chinese culture class which consisted of a tour of a "wet" market and a cooking class. When we showed up at the cooking workshop, our teacher Weiqi walked us over to the wet market which was about a 15 minute walk. Basically a wet market just means that all of the produce and meats were the freshest they could be, a good portion of the meat actually being live for you to choose. We picked up some pineapple, fish and seasonings for the dishes that we would cook and Weiqi walked us around and told us what everything was. She also helped us buy some fruit which was definitely appreciated by those of us who have been missing fresh fruit in our diets. We saw some pretty interesting stuff, especially in the meat section, including a pigs face, sheep's leg, live fish being killed in front of us and a woman who picked out a chicken from a cage, had it weighed and then got it slaughtered in front of all of us. I couldn't bare to watch them do it, so I walked back to the produce section and watched the reactions of my classmates. It was really cool to see the whole market and be told what everything was by someone who can actually read the signs and interact with the vendors.

After the market tour, we headed back to the cooking workshop to learn how to cook 2 dishes. We were in 2 groups each cooking 2 dishes, so we were able to try kungbao chicken (basically just a spicy chicken and peanut dish), three delicacies of the land (eggplant, peppers and potatoes in a sauce) and a fried fish dish. We all cut up our ingredients and then got to cook our own portion of one dish in a wok and then everyone shared them. Here's some action shots and a look at the food we made. It was all DELICIOUS! Afterwards, the chef cooked us some green beans and sweet and sour pork as well to try which were also really good. Overall it was a great afternoon and we were all stuffed by the end of it. 

The set up of the workshop

Joe and I with our cleavers 

All of our chopped veggies

The roommates and their cleavers

The boys cooking our Kungbao Chicken

Joe's masterpiece

Me cooking and trying not to burn myself

The cooking teacher was scary.. this was me trying not to get yelled at

Me and my veggies

The fish the other group cooked.. not a fan of my food staring back at me

Freshly made sweet and sour pork with a pineapple we bought at the market

Our group, the awesome chef and our teacher Weiqi!

P.S. To our families at home, do not expect us to be able to whip these dishes up for you, we merely followed what the guy yelled at us and hoped we didn't poison anyone!