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Women's Workshop Draws Hundreds to Watch Taiwanese 'Night Market' Food Demonstration

'Prince of Taiwanese Cuisine' draws 240 local residents interested in Taiwanese street food.

本文附有金瓜米粉烹飪過程視頻,敬請觀賞。

Note: a demonstration of how to make pumpkin rice noodles is in a video clip attached to this article.

Elevated above roach coach status, street vendor food is hot now, and the Taiwanese equivalent—night market food—has fans all its own.

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You don't have to be foodie to appreciate crab soup from Keelung, squid soup from Taipei, or salt and pepper fried chicken from Fengchia. Those and five other regional specialties drew an overbooked crowd when a famous chef from Taiwan recently gave a demonstration in Mandarin.

Women's Workshop, a local non-profit organization, apparently hit a nerve when it sponsored the demonstration on how to make at home seven savory dishes and a dessert from the night markets.

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Set for 200, they ended up with 240, and more still on the waiting list. Attendees came to China Stix Restaurant in Santa Clara from all over, including Campbell, Cupertino and Los Altos. 

"I'm a new homemaker," said Rebecca Yang of Los Altos. "I used to work full-time and hardly cook. Now I cook a lot, so I need a class like this to learn how to cook better."

The class was sponsored by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco, which invited chef Ching-Lung Huang, nicknamed "Prince of Taiwanese Cuisine," from Taiwan to teach in Mandarin.

Huang worked from north to south, according to the geographic locations of the dishes.

The seven savory dishes were:

  • Crab soup from Keelung (the northernmost city of Taiwan)
  • Squid soup from Taipei's Shi-Lin Night Market
  • Sesame oil noodles with shredded pork from Taipei's Yuan-Huan Night Market
  • Salt and pepper fried chicken from Fengchia,
  • Stir-fried chicken over rice from Chiayi, seafood porridge from Kaohsiung
  • Pumpkin rice noodles from the island of Penghu off the west coast of Taiwan.

While cooking, Huang gave pointers on how to simplify recipes for home cooking. For instance, he said it's hard to do a quick stir-fry at home because home stoves can't reach the same high heat as in professional stoves, but a quick dip in boiling water can also keep squid tender, and is healthier.

When each dish was done, it was divided into bite-sized servings, and served to attendees in little cups.

Huang also presented a popular Taiwanese dessert, taro tapioca pudding with coconut milk, which because it must be served cold was prepared outside of the classroom setting, so he gave step-by-step verbal instructions instead.

The bite-sized samples of Huang's cooking seemed to appeal to the crowd.

"I used to love night market food when I lived in Taiwan," said Amy Chen of Campbell. "I'm happy to learn how to make it at home. The teacher makes it seem totally doable."

Both Chen and Yang are members of Women's Workshop, called mother's classroom in Chinese, which offers courses in the domestic arts.

Most of the cooking classes are small, taught by local residents, but the nonprofit invites a famous Taiwanese chef to teach a large class once a year.

For information about future cooking classes of Women's Workshop, contact Elaine Han at kaoelaine@gmail.com.

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