Over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, our friends Scott and Dawn hosted a Chinese Cooking Party. This following a weekend long of over eating, was truly a feast!

The theme for the cooking party is for everyone to bring a dish or two to demonstrate, so that we can all learn from each other to cook the various “famous” dishes. While most of us are Chinese, we all have very different backgrounds. Dawn is an ABC with Chinese/Malaysian background. Laurie and I are from Shanghai, and Dorothy is from Hong Kong. Mixed into the group is a Latina and an American Filipino from LA . Our husbands are even more diversed, with ancestors from across 4 different continents. The point of all this is that a Chinese Cooking Party can be for anyone. At the end of the day, it’s an opportunity for everyone to get together, and catch up with each other’s busy lives over some delicous food and drinks.

The same Chinese food, made by different people can have very different taste/texture, it’s all about the “secret” technique or ingredient one incorporates into the cooking method. So, having a live demostration allowed us to get to the bottom of things. In addition, we not only learn something new, we were also able to teach and share our food and heritage with our kids, the same way our moms showed us.

Our menu for the party:

1. Fried Egg Rolls (Beijing Style made with shreded carrots, and mung bean threads)

2. Pan Fried Seafood Pot Stickers (Cantonese Style)

3. Steamed Pot Stickers (Northern Chinese Style)

4. Scallion Pancake (Beijing Style) (recipe on our previous blog)

5. Stir fried rice cake (Shanghai Style)

6. Chicken Adobo (not Chinese, but very delicious)

7. Eight Treasured Rice with Red Bean Paste (Shanghai Style)

8. Baked Coconut Sticky Rice Cake (will post recipe soon) 

It was somewhat a coincidence we had 8 dishes all together, but hey, we are Chinese and luck is never a bad thing! So go aheaad and host a Cooking Party this holiday season!