Yesterday we went to a cooking class. I heard about the class through a friend and thought it would be an interesting cultural experience for my parents. The class was held at a restaurant in Puxi and we learned how to make two Chinese dishes and then had lunch in the restaurant.

The eager students before the class....Let me just throw in here that my Dad was the only man at the "party". He was a really good sport and even got an honourable mention from the owner of the restaurant for being brave enough to attend such an event.

The class was presented by the owner of the restaurant and his wife. The instructions were given in both Mandarin and English. The participants of the class were from all over the world...mostly other Asian countries and one from Germany.
The first dish presented was a cold dish (Xiang Cai Luo Bo Qiu) and is usually served as the first course of a traditional Chinese meal. We would call this dish a salad. It had simple ingredients of radishes and coriander with a soy sauce-vinegar dressing. Note: the radishes are smashed instead of cut. This allows the dressing to soak into to body of the radish.

Xiang Cai Luo Bo Qiu

Next we learned how to make spare ribs. Pork ribs were cut into small pieces with the bone still attached and then mixed with garlic, red bell pepper and some sauces.

The ribs were then deep fried in very hot oil.

And....this is what they looked like when they were done. They were very tasty!!!

This is one of the sauces.....see if you can find this in Fred Meyer...

This is two different types of soy sauce...one light and one dark

These are dishes from our lunch. This one is "Prawns in a bird nest". I made up that name but it was very fitting. The nest is made out of deep fried sweet potatos. This dish was pretty good but a little slimy...

Mom and Dad at the banquet table. Did I mention that Dad was the only man? Well here he is with all the ladies....Our lunch was a feast!! We lost count how many dishes were presented...I think somewhere between 18 and 24...we were stuffed

Mom practicing her chopstick skills.....our host found some forks and brought them to the table for Wo de Mama and Wo de Baba

Beautiful fruit dish......fresh fruit is a very common dessert in China

This is one of the other "desserts". It is pieces of fried pumpkin and pieces of corn on the cob.... I don't think that it is really dessert if it has vegetables in it...

While we were at the cooking class I met a new friend. She told me about a little shop that sells pieces of embroidered cloth from the Yunan Province. This is close to the Tibetan boarder. So....on the way home we stopped by the shop to take a look. The owner was a young women from a small village in Yunan Province and said her name is long and hard to pronounce so she is called "the village girl". That is the name of her shop. She showed us beautiful pieces of clothing that had been embroidered and worn by people from her village and surrounding areas. She goes to her home town once or twice a year and collects old pieces of clothing and sells them in the city. I think these would make very interesting art quilts so I will be returning to the shop again. Dad is modeling a pair of pants with bright colored embroidery designs on the legs. They were just a little short for him or I am sure he would have bought them to wear back in the US.