Learning to Cook

Last week we went to a cooking class at the local kitchen shop. It was a special class by one of my favourite local chefs, Ric Orlando. He is the owner of New World Bistro in Albany (amazing food) and two time champion of Chopped on the Food Network. Can't wait to try his other restaurant near Woodstock.

The class itself was a lot of fun (although I wish we had known about the bring your own wine rule), with the chef demonstrating how to cook all the food while we all watched. He was very entertaining with lots of stories and cooking tips. I would highly recommend anyone doing a class like this.

The menu consisted of pear mustard and homemade ricotta on toast, gluten free gnocchi with a tomato sauce, pork loin with pickled cherry peppers and cannoli cones. We got a copy of all the recipes too if anyone wants to see how to make this stuff! The photos are from Matt's phone but they came out pretty well I think. We got samples of all the food he made and here is what we got!...

After our cheese making experiment earlier this year (here) it was nice to see how to do it successfully, even with a few things that went wrong! The pear mostarda is kind of like a condiment that you could eat with bread and cheese with pear, dried figs, mustard, mustard oil and mustard seeds among other things, cooked in a sugary syrup. It may sound weird but it was really good. We already got mustard oil and black mustard seeds from the Asian market so will be making it soon!

This was the most amazing gnocchi. Light, fluffy and delicious. I am so excited to have such a good gnocchi recipe. We've made it a couple of times before but it was nowhere near as good as this! The sauce was good too. There were big chunks of bacon in it but I wanted to try the gnocchi so much I picked out the bacon and ate the rest of the sauce. I would never usually do this but I'm glad I did! (We actually got more food than in the picture but it looked so good I tucked in before getting a pic).

I didn't try the pork of course, but Matt said it was the best he had ever had. He's even made it since then as Price Chopper had buy one get two free on pork tenderloin last week. His attempt wasn't quite as good as Chef cooked, but according to Matt, still the best pork he had ever made by a long way! Everyone at the class was raving about how tasty and moist the pork was so I'm pretty sure it was a big hit!

Cannoli cream served in an ice cream cone with pistachios and shaved chocolate. Do  I need to say more apart from more please!!

Adventures in China IV (the final chapter)

So after the journey, purple mountain and food, the final installment is here. Wednesday was the final day of the workshop and after lunch we had a free afternoon/evening. A group of us decided to take a trip to downtown and visit the Confucius Temple. This involved taking the nicest, cleanest subway I've ever seen! They are in the process of extending it across the river which would have been useful for me this time, but I'm glad we got to ride it anyway.

The temple was in a historic part of downtown and is very very popular with Chinese tourists. It kind of looked like a China town you would expect to see in Disney or something except it was the real deal. The temple area had a small river running through it where you could take trips on a boat (which I didn't do) but there was these huge golden dragons on one of the walls.

Confucius Temple, Nanjing

The temple itself was very intricate and quite different to the Ming Temple at Purple Mountain. Here is Mr Confucius himself.

Confucius at the Confucius Temple

You could learn how to do all the correct techniques for prayer and worship that seemed to involve putting red ribbons on the trees, bowing, lighting incense and hitting the giant drum, but it was still pretty neat to see everyone doing it without actually doing it myself.

Chinese characters carvings

There were huge intricate pictures inside the temple that were carved out of marble depicting various scenes from the life of Confucius. It would have been nice to spend more time inside the temple and around the whole area but we had a limited amount of time and wanted to see as much as possible!

Confucius Temple

After the temple we took a walk to the main downtown area. Surprisingly, although I don't know why, this was like any downtown in any big city. Giant brand new skyscrapers, malls, Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, all the pricey designer shops are there!!

Downtown Nanjing

I think my favourite moment on the walk around was seeing a guy come out of a random door carrying a cage full of a variety of animals, which he strapped to his moped (there are hundreds and thousands of mopeds everywhere in Nanjing) and drove off. I managed to sneak a picture and it made me smile (although I don't want to think about what is going to happen to these little guys).

Where are they going?

As I mentioned in the food post, we all had dinner at a big restaurant in one of the malls (which was great) and then took a taxi back to the hotel. The next morning I hd breakfast and hit the long road home. This was probably the scariest part of the whole trip as I was doing it along.

Step 1: Get taxi to train station. Should have been simple as the people at the hotel told the driver where to go and I knew roughly the way to get there. Driver turned the wrong way out of the hotel and I had no idea where he was going as I knew we at least had to cross the Yangtze and we went the wrong way for that. After pointing at the Chinese for train station that I had written down he spoke some Chinese and did a "choo choo" sound, so at least I knew we where going to a train station even if it was the wrong one. Anyway, it turned out he was just taking a really long route to the bridge (to get more money I'm sure) and we made it eventually. Unfortunately the detour meant I missed the train I wanted to get.

Step 2: Get a train ticket to Shanghai Hongqiao (SH) train station and get on train. This sounds simple. It was not. I was faced with twenty lines of people all standing in front of ticket windows that were labeled only in Chinese. Which line was I supposed to get in?? I picked a random one and I had my ticket from SH to Nanjing and I pointed at the SH name and the line to try and ask a man if I was in the right place. He seemed to understand, took my 140 yuan and gave it to his friend at the front who bought my ticket. Unfortunately the pointing didn't work as he got a ticket from SH to Nanjing instead of Nanjing to SH. I managed to explain this with pointing and he realised the mistake. We got in another line to get money back, went to a third line to get the right ticket. Unsuccessful again, this time the ticket was from Nanjing to Shanghai instead of SH. A fourth line was required to swap this ticket for the right one. At last!! My train was leaving in about 20-25 mins so the nice man and his friend took me to where you wait for the trains, showed me that I could show my ticket to get free bottled water and where they would display when it was ok to go get on the train. He was very nice and despite our language barrier we figured it out in the end. We even swapped business cards, although his is all in Chinese characters so I have no idea what he does!

Step 3: Take train to SH. Easy and fast.Was entertained by lady with little baby sitting next to me. Also learnt that Chinese babies like peekaboo and don't wear diapers/nappies. One of these was slightly disturbing.

Step 4: Take subway from train station to airport. Easy again! Ticket machine had an English button and I get a seat the whole way. It took about 90 minutes. I decided this was a better option than a taxi as it was a lot cheaper and a lot less scary!

Step 5: Take flight home. Once again I had no one sitting next to me which made the journey a lot nicer and more comfy. Got some sleep. The line in immigration for non-citizens was enormous, and it took forever. Did enjoy some arguments as people tried skipping the line to catch there flights.

Step 6: Home!! Yay. 6 crazy days and the longest 36 hour Friday ever.

Me and one the followers of Confucius

Adventures in China III

Ok, so I've covered the journey there (here) and the day I spent at purple mountain (here). The next step is a short post about all the food and drink I had in Nanjing. I mentioned the delicious steamed sea bass I had on Sunday night but that was nothing compared to the rest of the week! I was a little worried with my dietary choices that I would struggle to find food I could eat, but it really wasn't a problem :-)

Breakfast was a buffet provided by the hotel each morning. There was a whole array of different foods that varied each day. There was always cereal, toast, pastries etc. but there was always a whole lot more local food. There doesn't seem to be any real distinguishing feature of each meal in China (in Nanjing at least). If you eat it for dinner then you'd eat it for breakfast too... fried rice, noodles, mushrooms, sushi, seaweed salad, soup and one day they had something that was labeled donkey. Not sure if it was a translation issue or if it really was donkey! I don't have photos from breakfast though so you'll have to take my word for the fact it was a very nice start to the day!

On Monday night we had a workshop banquet and on Wednesday night a group of us went to a restaurant for dinner. I'm grouping these together as the food experience was very similar. Family style food where everything was brought out dish by dish. You never knew how many dishes there were going to be or when it would end! Luckily we had some people at our table who were able to tell us what each dish was so my no land meat eating wasn't a problem.

Fruit salad, Nanjing salted duck, black ear fungus, snails, fruit in gelatin and fried shrimp

 Anyway, there was SO much food - black ear fungus with chiles (delicious), more steamed fish and green leafy vegetables, lots of tasty tofu, sweet and sour shrimp (which was way better than anything I've had anywhere else) and a whole load of meat dishes that I obviously didn't try.

More snails, black ear fungus, fish, greens, fruit, chicken and the giant bowl of noodles to finish the meal!

More steamed fish, greens, and egg dish, beef, beans, black ear fungus, Nanjing translucent noodles and beer

The other thing I noticed about eating these kind of meals in Nanjing was that there is no main course/desert type division. Sweet things would appear in the middle of beef and fish course and noodles/rice always came out last (which was good as it meant I didn't fill up on starch). Some of the little sweet balls - i was told they were pumpkin but it didn't taste like pumpkin - were so good I could have eaten them the whole time.

The little fried balls on the right were so good, as was the fish

Most of the time I stuck to water, sprite and a few beers but on banquet night and restaurant night I had the delightful (not) experience of trying "Chinese Water" the local Nanjing liquor which was a type of vodka. I was not a fan, but others enjoyed it and I can verify it was very strong! Especially when served in what appeared to be soup bowls. I was polite and drank some but it really wasn't for me. Must be an acquired taste.

Chinese Water

Adventures in China II

I arrived late on Saturday (part I is here) and had all of Sunday to myself to go and see the city. I was a bit nervous about exploring by myself after seeing the language barrier but luckily I found an Ozzie/German in the hotel lobby that was also there for the workshop and we teamed up to take on Nanjing. Thanks Aurel!!

We decided to head towards Purple Mountain, a huge park area that is part of the city and just across the Yangtze (where the main city is). First stop was the World Culture Heritage site Xiaoling Tomb of the Ming Dynasty. I will first point out that is was drizzly and cloudy all day, which meant that photos were not as good as they could be.

One of the coolest parts of the tomb was the pathway that was lined with huge stone sculptures of animals. They were massive and very impressive. I believe they were supposed to show the stature of those who the tomb was honoring, as well as protect them.

Elephants!

See, I was really there

It wouldn't be right if there wasn't a lion

The whole tomb was in a scenic area and after walking along the animal path (and still not finding the actual tomb) we walked all around the gardens. I imagine they would be much nicer when all the trees and plants were flowering (and it wasn't raining) but it was still very pretty with lots of trees and plants that I couldn't identify.

Avenue of trees in the park

When we still hadn't found the tomb (this place was massive) we strolled up plum blossom hill (where there were no plum blossoms as it was September) and came across this beautiful structure. There was also a man on a bike at the top with a caged bird strapped on to the back. It seemed random!

The colors were amazing, especially the blue

After eventually finding the tomb (and all the people), it was very cool to see. I can't tell you a lot of stories about the tomb but I'm sure you can find more information online if you want!

Stonework inside the tomb area

The main part of the tomb and me. More wonderful colors that the cloud and camera don't do justice

The next part of the journey was the fun part. We wanted to go to a different area on the mountain but it was going to be a longish walk and there were no taxis so the bus it was. I'm pretty sure the driver took pity on us tourists pointing at a map and let us on without paying and told us when to get off. It turned out the bus didn't quite go where we thought and we still had to walk a way, but hey, I took the bus!

The Linggu Temple Scenic Area was the next stop as the map told us there was a pagoda there. This part of purple mountain was more deserted, but it still contained huge stone buildings and temples, as well as the pagoda at the top of the hill.

Pagoda 101

You could walk up to the top of the pagoda up a spiral staircase that successfully made me dizzy! Due to the low clouds (and pollution) there wasn't a very good view. You could faintly make out the central business district but you can get some idea of the scale from this pic at least.

View from Purple Mountain

There were a lot of other things to do in the area, including taking a gondola to the top but it was getting lateish and we had a workshop paid for dinner at 6 so we eventually found a taxi and got back to the hotel. Dinner was in the hotel and I had a whole steamed sea bass which was AMAZING. It was also pretty huge but totally worth it.