Location: Shanghai, China
After touring the city yesterday, I decided to do something different: Dumpling Revolution!
Yep, we are going to learn how to make Chinese dumplings. Our guide and chef took us to what I’d call a “farmer’s market”. We left the center city because the chef did not want us to see a made-for-tourist location. This place was certainly used by the locals, as evidenced by the number of electric scooters parked outside.
Inside were rows of vendors. The front section was for already-prepared-for-you food, and after that were produce and the “wet market”, where live animals are sold.
Many of the vendors had long chopsticks to gently “encourage” the critters back in their box/case when they tried to make an escape.
Yet even with how low tech the market was, everyone accepted electronic payment via cell phones. Such apps exist in the US, but have not caught on like they have in Asia. You just point your phone camera at the QR code, push a button and you’ve paid. I know that the US and Canada are pretty much the last nations that commonly use physical signature checks, so I wonder where we’ll go.
From there we went to the chef’s teaching kitchen.
We didn’t really “make” the whole dumpling, but just the dough and we then folded the dumplings around the already-made filling.
The dumplings were then either steamed or boiled. So, it was a personally-made lunch, with additional rice and noodles the chef instructors mercifully made for us.
A fun change from the generic tourist stuff.