One of my favorite things to do when my friend Judy comes to town is go to dim sum. She always knows all the best places. When we get there she rattles off our order in frantic Chinese and points at various carts and the kitchen...and Voila! amazing little, piping hot dishes start materializing on our table. One of my favorite dishes to indulge in at dim sum are the dumplings- especially the har gau (shrimp dumplings), xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and jiu cai bau (chive stuffed dumplings). My mouth is watering just thinking about them! So when I found out that UC Davis was offering free dumpling making workshops, I was excited and registered right away. If you read my previous post back on Dec. 16th, you probably remember me discussing the Confucius Institute, a partnership between UCD and Jianghan University in China that opened in the fall of 2013, to promote a better understanding of Chinese food and culture. [Interesting fact: Chef Martin Yan (of Yan Can Cook fame) is a culinary advisor to the program.] Well, I finally got to attend one of their dumpling workshops and it was a blast. The workshop was  informative, interesting and the instructors were extremely nice.

 

Our workshop was led by Sa (Sally) Woo, an Associate Professor at Jiangnan University and instructor at the Confucius Institute at UC Davis. You can't help but like Sally right off  the bat. She's bubbly, friendly and very patient. She started off our workshop with a brief but informative lecture on the origin and development of Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings). We then watched a quick video on dough and filling making.

Once we moved into the cooking facility, we were divided into groups of four to a table/burner. We were given a handout, a bowl of dough, pre-prepared filling, a mini rolling pin, and various other kitchen tools that we would need to make our own dumplings. Sally then had us gather around her and she showed us step by step how to cut and roll out the dough, place the filling in the dough and then various ways to close the dumpling. She showed us four different decorative edges we could make to seal the dumplings. Then we were give ample time to try out our newly learned techniques for ourselves while she and her assistants walked around and helped. Once we were done making our batch of dumplings, we were showed the proper method to boil the dumplings so that they get cooked evenly. This was a pretty quick process and then we got to eat the fruits of our labor. I've eaten a lot of pan-fried and steamed dumplings in my lifetime but I have to say the boiled dumplings we had were just as tasty - and so simple to make! There was even a condiments table set up so we could mix up our favorite dipping sauce concoction.

New Year's is right around the corner and with it comes the tradition of making New Year's resolutions. Well good news, if one of your resolutions is to learn a new skill-- check out the Chinese Dumpling Making Workshops at UC Davis' Confucius Institute. My friend Mary tipped me off about this new program which had it's grand opening not too long ago in September 2013. The Institute is a partnership between UC Davis; Jiangnan University, one of China’s top research universities in food science and technology; and Hanban, part of the Chinese Ministry of Education. The institute offers free workshops to the community on the art of tea ceremonies, tea tasting, and dumpling making. If you're interested, the Confucius Institute is currently taking registrations for it's 2014 dumpling making workshops. At the workshop, you'll get a lesson on the history and culture of the Chinese dumpling before practicing dumpling wrapper-rolling and stuffing with a meat and vegetable filling. The workshop is hands-on and participants will be cooking and eating their dumplings.

 

For more info: http://confucius.ucdavis.edu/programsevents/index.html

 

Registration (the January dates are currently full, but there is space open currently for Feb 21, Mar 7, Mar 21) :   http://confucius.ucdavis.edu/programsevents/dumplingworkshops.html