Noodles, dumplings, sushi!

The name of this post just makes my mouth water! Talk about culinary school nostalgia..

First off we had noodle day. One of my favorite things in the world is asian style noodles-any which way.

Pad Thai-I requested to make this dish. It is one of the most time consuming dishes to make because there are so many different ingredients, but it was really fun making it. We got to use a large wok to cook everything, giving it an even more authentic feel. The interesting thing we learned about pad thai, and which Ive realized through eating around NYC, is that no 2 pad thai dishes taste the same. While I made one recipe of pad thai, another student made the same recipe but we were told to sample each and see how different they may be, regardless of same ingredients. Indeed it was true-and both were amazing.

 Pan Fried Chinese Egg Noodles with Beef and Broccoli

 Vietnamese Rice Boodle Bun Salad with Beef. This was kind of like a bulgogi meets salad, win win.

Dumpling day was so much fun, and a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the previous week. After making the fillings for each dumpling, we all worked on shaping them. This was oddly therapeutic as we were all standing still and wrapping up the dumplings in fun shapes. Standing still is not something you hear often in any kitchen, especially when 6 people are making the entire menu so it was a nice break.

Pork and Vegetable Shao Mai

 Shrimp Summer Rolls

 Shrimp Shao Mai with Cilantro Chile Dipping Sauce

 Chinese Pork Potstickers

 'Better than Zen Spring Rolls'-truth in the name.

 Mu Shu Chicken with Peking Pancakes-This was so fun to make, especially since we got to make our own pancakes!

 Sushi Day!!!
We learned a lot about the history and importance of sushi in Japanese culture. In order to be a sushi chef, you need to train for something like 10 years! Our chef helped us by demonstrating a bunch of times and then allowing us to practice until we ran out of ingredients. We prepared vegetables, sliced fresh fish, made spicy mayo, and cooked some duck teriyaki (wow) as our ingredients to choose from. Then we were each given a mat and a bowl of rice, and a lot of room to play. This was such a fun class, allowing each of us to make exactly the type of sushi we like, and getting the repetitive practice. As you can see below we made enough sushi for, Id say 20 people. It was great timing because my mom was coming in to meet me that afternoon. We had a 'free' (minus tuition) sushi lunch!