Making Memories in China

So a few weeks ago, the 8^th of March marked the Chinese New Year, the start of the Year of the Monkey.

In celebration of this, Memories of China, the specialty restaurant at the Vivanta by Taj, MG Road, had a week-long Chinese New Year buffet. Since we have been learning about Chinese cuisine in our Culinary Practicals classes at college, going for this lunch as a class one Tuesday was the perfect end to the semester!

The Class with Chef Tong of Memories of China

The food was delicious, of course. My personal favourites on the menu were the Spicy Lemongrass soup, Beef Tenderloin in Oyster Sauce and the Eggplant, Okra and Long Beans in Hunan sauce.

But the best part of the afternoon for me was watching and making dumplings. Why, you might ask, in a fully specialized kitchen, geared to cook food for a 90 cover restaurant, plus banquet meals of over 3000 pax (hotel and airline parlance for number of people/passengers), was I enamored by something so simple?

Dumplings

Well, for one, dumplings are delicious, okay! And for another, I’ve been completely enamoured by the art of rolling and folding dumplings, since I watched episodes 6, 7 and 8 of Cooking Master Boy (Chuuka Ichiban) – an anime series about the culinary adventured of a boy training to become a Master Chef in a fictional, old world China.

The art and skill of rolling out the perfectly even, thin dumpling skins, filling them and then nimbly folding them into beautiful, decorative little parcels, which later burst in your mouth with an explosion of flavour and texture, could not have been more awesomely animated than in these episode! This is not an exaggeration – watch the episodes, I say!

So, after that, watching the chefs nimbly assemble these dumplings at Memories of China, was naturally very exciting. The chefs, and my classmates were highly amused by how long I spent watching them through the glass window to the kitchen.

After our meal, we got a tour of the kitchen, and even got to try our hands at making some dumplings. 

Me,  trying to fold a dumpling

Can you guess which one I made?

Coincidentally, the episode of Cooking Master Boy that inspired all this excitement is about the (sadly, only fictional) annual dumpling festival in the Canton province, to celebrate the… Chinese New Year!