Cooking school in Guangzhou (Cantonese food)

[xh207hi]

Hello, my family member is looking for some good cooking school offering some English-language courses on Cantonese food. He is not a professional cook, but he owns a non-chinese restaurant and has some knowledge of various cuisines from around the world. He would like to go as pro as possible this time.

 

So far, I found Guangzhou New East Cuisine School (http://www.gdxdf.com), but I cannot find any info on details. I wrote to their qq but so far no answer and maybe you know something more about this school or other/better ones?

 

[abcdefg]

I don't live in Guangzhou and I don't know that school. I cannot even read the website without banners and popups floating all over the page. Makes it too annoying to try for long.

 

Not sure how much time your family member has to invest, but if it's more than a few days, he will probably need to just find a friendly Cantonese chef who will let him apprentice with him in the restaurant kitchen. He can pick up preparation techniques pretty well without knowing the language and someone there can write down names of ingredients and seasonings as needed.

 

Another idea would be to go study together with a bilingual Chinese friend who could help him along with the process. Do you live in Guangzhou? Maybe you know someone suitable, such as a language teacher seeking temporary extra income.

 

Neither solution is anywhere close to being ideal. A couple years back in Kunming I hired a nice lady who previously owned and ran a small restaurant to teach me Chinese cooking in my home once a week. We would go to the market together at the beginning of the afternoon, and she would help me select the best fresh ingredients. The language issue is definitely a problem with an arrangement like that and would not work without your relative knowing local speech.

 

I attended professional tea school in Kunming last year. It's probably somewhat similar to a cooking school in that part is theory and part is hands on. It was very challenging from a language standpoint, and even while trying real hard there was lots that I had to hear several times before  getting it straight. I took photos of the teacher's slides and recorded her explanations. Reviewed that material every night.

 

Unfortunately China is not like Thailand, where you can show up in Chiang Mai today and enroll in two days of cooking class tomorrow for a very modest fee. There it's conducted in English and the students are expats or students.

[lling]

New East Cuisine School is quite well-konwn in china ( becasue of their advertisement ). Generally when we talk about cuisine school, New East would be the first school comes into our mind. I'm Cantonese, and honestly I don't know if here have any cuisine school offer english courses..

I entered that web and wrote to their qq to ask if they offer English-language courses. Sadly, the answer is no...

[Chris Two Times]

^^^ Their lessons would be in Mandarin, or in Cantonese?

 

That'd be a great 2-for-1: language lesson/practice in order to learn a nice skill.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[lling]

The lessons would be in Mandarin

[abcdefg]

That'd be a great 2-for-1: language lesson/practice in order to learn a nice skill.

 

Ah, Chris, it seems you have discovered my closely-guarded secret. I used that line of reasoning in learning to cook, learning about tea, practicing tai chi, traveling to fun places in China, and on and on. The new activity was what drove the process forward; the language was merely a supporting element and it developed at a natural pace in order to achieve those practical goals.

 

But please don't spread it around. Lets agree to just keep telling people the only way to learn Chinese is to sit in class in an uncomfortable chair while an indifferent teacher makes us practice boring material over and over.

 

(Smiley face; this last paragraph's advice is given tongue in cheek.)

[Chris Two Times]

Haha! Indeed, I am going to steal your secret as I plan to do more of this in the future. I should credit you for it fully though --> haha, I will have to start citing it in the future as (abcdefg, 2016).

 

I don't want to say I am having a mid-life crisis (am in my early 40s) as I don't have time to waste on such silly notions, but I feel I may be in a bit of a rut as of late. When Chinese innocently ask me what my hobbies are, as simple as the question and answer to it should be, I really have trouble answering it. The reason is I have focused heavily on my work in the past four years, really putting my heart and soul into it and I like the outcomes and the products I have created from it. Soon, it will be time to step aside and take a break from my work and focus on studying Chinese full-time, which is something I have wanted to do since 2001. Finally making good on this (hopefully!) will be so sweet.

 

But, indeed, I don't want it to just be about sitting in the classroom and the library and turning page after page after page. In the next 1-3 years, I really want to hit the reset button on life and get decent at Chinese (whatever that really means) and to cultivate some real hobbies that I hold near and dear to my heart. I'm not sure Chinese cooking is it for me, but this thread definitely struck a chord in me.

 

I wish the OP's family member well and hope they make good on it. I do get excited by hearing about others' goals and really seeing them going after them and seeing where they end up. I too wish to do the same and perhaps that's why I am drawn to chinese-forums.com. When I see someone mention a phrase like "would like to go as pro as possible", I only want to cheer them on and hope they get as far as possible.

 

I would think there would be some kind of culinary institute in Guangzhou or somewhere that the OP's family member could attend to make this happen. I apologize for being of no help in this matter as I don't know.

 

Sheesh, I'm rambling. Ah well, abcdefg, your secret is safe with me. I won't tell anyone and shall instead insist that only more, more, MORE! hours in the classroom and the library is the ONLY way to improve the Chinese. There!

 

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[Flickserve]

^^^ Their lessons would be in Mandarin, or in Cantonese?

That'd be a great 2-for-1: language lesson/practice in order to learn a nice skill.

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

that would be my experience with Cantonese.

[vellocet]

I looked into going to cooking school before.  The problem is, Chinese cooking schools are geared towards cranking out hundreds of working class graduates.  It's not really haute cuisine like Westerners expect to learn from a cooking school.  The class goes fast and they have no time to baby laowai.  Moreover, the entire class is in Mandarin, which sounds great, but the problem is the huge number of specialized cooking vocabulary.  The unfamiliar ingredients and spices, all of which have different names.  Some of them don't even have English names, just scientific names.  I really wanted to have some kind of afternoon or evening cooking class, like we have in community colleges in America, but this doesn't exist.  Actually, Guangzhou is probably big enough to host a course like this, I would advise asking around on the local laowai forums. 

[Video Vocabulary]

A couple years back in Kunming I hired a nice lady who previously owned and ran a small restaurant to teach me Chinese cooking in my home once a week.

Can you tell a bit more about that experience?

Was it effective in terms of learning Chinese cooking?

What happened after that? Are you still learning Chinese cooking or have you learned enough?

[abcdefg]

Can you tell a bit more about that experience?

 

Sure, Video, be glad to tell you what i know. Lots of small restaurants in China fail within the first year. They are usually under-capitalized, and often they have not conducted careful market research. (Same happens in the US, by the way.)

 

Hiring this nice lady worked out very well. She was a cook at a residential language school, but had free time, none-the-less. She would come to my house, not far away, and we would start with a visit the wet market together. Very helpful for learning about how to select the best ingredients.

 

Me: "What do you look for when buying an eggplant?"

Her: "Look for one with smooth and shiny skin that is tight, not saggy. Weigh it in you hand and see if its heavier than others of about the same size. The flesh should not indent when pressed gently with a finger tip." --- And so on.

 

Extremely valuable, because only when using the best ingredients can your dish achieve its full potential. She also would talk me through selection of wet and dry condiments and spices, many fresh ground. Same approach when we bought meat or chicken.

 

Then we would go back to my appartment and cook the rest of the afternoon. We planned a menu while still at the market, usually one main dish, one vegetable, sometimes a soup. Always with rice. She would show me how to do the prep work, and then make me do it myself. We reviewed simple things like chopping an onion or smashing some glarlic, as well as more difficult ventures.

 

Then we cooked it up, with her starting each dish and my finishing it. You learn a lot that way: how high is the fire? How fast do you stir it? How does it look when it's nearly done and you need to reduce the heat? I asked endless questions; "How can you tell when it has cooked enough?" "How do you know if it's properly seasoned?" She was patient with her explanations and tolerated my sometimes stupid questions.

 

We met once a week for two or three months. After a while we would sometimes include her elderly mother who lived not far away. and also had been a chef, many years ago. The old lady often had her own ideas, and we listened to her and tried some of them out as well. She thought we both relied too much on stirring the wok with a big spoon, and should vigorously shake it more instead. Kind of flip the food around with the wrist.

 

I still cook a lot, today, all of it Chinese style. Have had other friends give me informal instruction as well. Usually takes the form of my helping them do something once  that came out real tasty, and me trying to reproduce  it later on my own.

 

I tried to pay my teacher 100 Yuan per hour, but she wouldn't accept the cash. We had a mutual friend who had introduced us, and she didn't want to take advantage of me. What we wound up doing was that if I need two eggplants, I would buy 4, and if I needed a kilo of onions, I would by 2 kilos and so on. Gave her the surplus and occasionally made a gift of a new pot or some kitchen utensils. Sometimes a bottle of nice wine, a chunk of nice meat, a dozen fresh eggs, some seasonal fruit. .

 

She seemed happy with that arrangement and so was I. We always sat down and ate the food we cooked. These were some pleasant meals. Talking about cooking, then towards the end of the meal, discussion broadened to include love and life in general. It's easy to become philosophical when your belly is full and happy.

[Flickserve]

Abcdefg, how did you cope with the new vocabulary? Did she write down some of the words?

[abcdefg]

Good question, Flickserve. She wrote some of them down and others we figured out together on my mobile phone with the aid of Pleco dictionary. She was a great cook, but she was not a person who had much formal education, so she could say more things than she could write. For example, one day she got stuck writing 香菜 (the herb coriander) but we worked it out together.

 

I kept everything she told me in a small notebook along with kitchen and market notes. Reviewed it after each session and even made flash cards to drill the more common and useful terms. I would use Baidu to learn more about some items and processes on my own.

 

Next time we met, I would ask about things which were not clear. She was a bright lady and after we got acquainted she made a game out of quizzing me as we went along. "How does this seasoning today differ from the way we made XYZ last week?" She was a gifted natural teacher without even knowing it.

 

I loved it. Learned a lot and had fun while doing it.