Day 1: Dumplings (Advanced Group)

 Dumplings Day!






Dumpling dough

    We started off the day with a few announcements and an introduction to the course. We went over expectations for the course. We also went over the menu for all nine days of the course. After we went all of the basics for the course, the intermediate group left to the Bissonet Campus, while the Advanced Group stayed at the high school. The Advanced group split into three groups of three and got to work. 


Niko, Isa, and Aiden making the salt rub

    Today the Advanced group made dumplings from scratch. We started off by reading over the recipe, so we could have an idea of everything that we need to get dome. To make the dumplings we started with the dough. When I first heard we were making dough from scratch I though that it it would take a long time, so I was surprised by how simple the ingredients are for dumpling dough- its just flour and water. Each group spent about 10 minutes kneading the dough, then set it aside to rest.


Alex and Lulu making dumpling filler

    After making the dough, we all quickly prepped pork for our day 2 menu item, which is ramen. We all made a salt rub, put it on the pork, then put it in the fridge. 


Isa, Talulah and Mackenzie
preparing to cut their
dumpling dough


    We then moved onto the fillinging. We were originally going to make one filling, but we had enough materials to make two fillinings for each group, one chicken and one pork, which everyone was really excited about, because who doesn’t love more food. After everyone finished their fillings we moved on to cutting and shaping our dough into thin, small, circles. Then, Chef Avril taugh all of us different ways to fold dumplings. My favorite was the pleating, but it was a bit challenging to get even pleats of each. We all then pan fried and steamed the dumplings. One groups dumplings actually exploded, which definitely caused a bit of a scare, but the rest of their dumplings came out really good. My personal favorite was the pan fried chicken dumplings. 


    After all of the cooking we started the clean up process. I was part of the clean up crew, so I was in charge of making sure everything got clean. It was actually a pretty quick process as every group was cleaning while cooking.


    I am really excited to cook ramen tomorrow and see how our pork turns out!





Isa putting the salt rub on the pork and 
preparing to put it in the fridge


Steamed Dumplings





Aiden, Isa, and Niko folding dumplings

Mackenzie cutting circles to make the
dumplings with



Lulu Cooking Dumplings












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