Stimulate All Your Senses on Lantau. Yes, all! Sichuan Cooking Course

Chinese New Year saw the Lo Uk Tsuen Country Club full of people coming to learn the basics of Sichuan cooking. Mature and younger, Lantau people and people from as far away as Britain – and Discovery Bay! streamed into the Club, hungry, armed with sharp knives and a willingness to tackle this difficult-looking but actually very easy skill.

Success! Ellie has just cooked her first Sichuan meal and is now ready to scoff it down.

Beautiful – Gong Bao Chicken wins again.

Cooking Sichuan food – is it really that serious?

No! It’s an extravaganza of joy, laughter and enjoyment.

One group wanted only vegetarian food, so imagine my pride when I could teach them vegetarian dumplings, the recipe to which I had invented only a few weeks earlier. Yum! In my opinion, better than pork and beef dumplings. Succulent and lightly crunchy with soybeans, vegetarian dumplings win my vote. But the pork dumplings are succulent too, and many people’s favourite.

Even people who have never cooked before in their lives can easily learn the basics of Sichuan cooking. And once you know how to cook one dish, you can start experimenting with other ingredients.

Folding dumplings together is a fun and social experience.

Success! Martin displays his first spicy potato cake with spice. And potato. It’s a cake, like a rösti but much better.

So come and spend a day on beautiful Lantau; go for a walk or hike first perhaps and then spend the afternoon learning Sichuan cooking on the lovely rooftop terrace or the charming kitchen of the Country Club and spend the evening eating and drinking beer.

Included: A goodie bag of spices, beer and my CHILLies!cookbook, a pdf file of 20 recipes full of beautiful photos.

煮飯 – jyu faan (cooking)
川菜 – Chuen choi (Sichuan food)
四川 – Sei chuen (Sichuan province)

Bonus: Recipe for vegetarian dumplings.