Cooking class, Day Five: Stir Fried Pork and Vegetables at Hutong Cuisine

Final day of cooking class! Our menu to take me home would be fish-fragrant pork, three treasures, and spicy dry-fried watermelon radish.

I'd been intrigued about the fish-fragrant pork ever since reading about it in Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. There's actually no fish in the dish; rather, the spices are the same that are used in many fish dishes, hence the name. Pork was sliced into long thin shreds. A typical sauce of rice wine, light soy, sugar, cornstarch, and water was prepared. The new addition to this dish was pickled chillies, which were diced. These were fried in oil with the garlic and ginger, then the pork was added and quickly seared off. The sauce was added around the edge, and then the dish was done. The pickled chillies added a very nice flavor and some great color to the dish.

Three treasures is a neat name for a good dish. It contains eggplant, potato and green pepper, three treasures from the land. These are each sliced into thin wafers and then pan fried until golden brown. Then, the whole lot is mixed with a sauce concoction and left to braise. That's all there is to it! For some reason, though, this version did not taste nearly as good as the one I've had in restaurants. It was so different that I think it was a different preparation. I hope to learn the other one, which had much more color and flavor.

A final dish was the spicy stir-fried watermelon radish. The watermelon radish is an absolutely gorgeous vegetable, white and green on the outside and a rich light purple inside. Made into julienned strips, it is ready for the stir fry. In some oil Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies are fried. The radish is added, quickly coated, and quickly cooked. Simple as that. This was delicious, still tasting like a garden with a solid kick.

Our group was neat, for the most part. A family of four from North Carolina was visiting their daughter studying here, and they seemed to be having a good time. A Danish guy was a good addition. Alas, as sometimes happens, there was one person who was off. Boorish, sexist, and could not stop talking, it was a relief for the class to end to get away from him. Subtle clues did not work and more severe measures could not be contemplated. Oh well.

So, five days of cooking planned, five days complete. In sum, I would give the "best cooking school of northern Beijing" to Black Sesame Kitchen. They each had their pluses and minuses. Black Sesame's food, in the end, just tasted better. With a more romantic point of view, my guess is it is because the two chefs in charge there seem to take more joy from cooking and to therefore put more love in the food.

The real benefit of these classes is to be seen. I am hopeful it carries over into a limited repertoire of dishes that I eat when I return to the States.