Sichuan Higher Inst. of Cuisine

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This morning, we spent our time in lecture with a man Chef Cheng taught two and a half decades ago who is now one of the top instructors at the Sichuan Higher Institute of of Cuisine. Not only was our demo/lecture period a great look into how to make the food we've been eating for the past few days, it was also really nice to be back in a kitchen setting for a few hours.
Chef Chen Ju Min and his assistant taught us the four regions, and eight base flavors of Chinese cuisine, the type of food that is typical of Sichuan (middle class fare), and how to make several authentic Chinese dishes. We began with chrysanthemum fish; a fish (usually cod) fillet is portioned into approximate 2x2" pieces, sliced in a cross-hatch form, and dredged lightly with corn starch, so that when the fish is fried, the small pieces formed by slicing separate and resemble a chrysanthemum flower. The dish is then covered in a sweet tomato-based sauce and served with garnish leaves to keep with the flower theme.
The next dish we were taught to make was vegetables with pork and spicy sauce. Chef Chen Ju Min began by stir-frying assorted leaf vegetables, bok choy and Chinese celery among others, and letting them sit in a large bowl when they were done. Next, he made a spicy oil by cooking Sichuan peppercorns and chilies in oil, then adding very thinly sliced pork tenderloin. When the pork was cooked, it was added and the spicy oil to the dish of stir-fried vegetables and served.
We were also taught to make pork dumplings with spicy oil and compound soy sauce, and while very simple, the small dish is incredibly tasty. The dumpling was simply an egg and a 2:3 mixture of pork tenderloin and fatty pork belly inside a dumpling, and the cooked dumplings were coated with compound soy sauce (soy cooked down by an eighth with spices and brown sugar), spicy oil, minced garlic and sesame seeds.
The final dish we were taught to make was both simple and wonderful, and we've been eating them every morning for breakfast, bao zi, or pork steam buns. First, a simple enriched dough was made with lard, and the filling was made with pork tenderloin and fermented vegetable mix, a staple product that can be bought everywhere in China.
We left around midday for lunch with the chef instructor, and returned an hour and a half later to try our hand at the dishes we had just learned. In the kitchen, we tried to kill our fish dead (sometimes in vain), make our sauces to the proper viscosity, and create perfectly sealed steam buns. For the most part, we were happily successful, but some of us had a harder time than others. The steam buns were particularly difficult, because almost none of us could mimic the tiny, even, and perfectly molded works of art Chef Chen Ju Min or Chef Cheng produced, but it was a really great experience just to try. I'm happy to say the group I was in did a pretty good job, and everyone had a lot of fun being back in a kitchen, especially once we got to eat our work.
Being in a kitchen today and actually getting to cook, in such an esteemed culinary school as the Sichuan Institute, was wonderful, and I think we all feel very lucky to have done so.

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