Well, I've finished the academic portion of my Asian cuisine class. This week is all testing. We started off this week with a field trip down to Chinatown. There we marveled at the architecture, the strange aromas wafting through the air, the even stranger foods and ingredients for sale, and the crazy old ladies that kept trying to elbow their way through everyone.
This has been a very interesting class for your Rabbi. First, because this is the cuisine I know the least about, and everything is different: different knives, different cutting & cooking techniques, different ingredients, etc. Second because, well, it's hard to be a Rabbi, and do well with Asian cuisine. Asians eat everything, and by that I mean everything. This is especially true of the Chinese. One look at their ingredients tells the story. Deer tail, cow eyes, swallow's nest, shark fin (the dorsal fin), and bull penis were on sale all over the place on today's tour. Most ethnic Chinese have never really heard of a Jewish person, let alone Kashrut. It's been a challenge, and mistakes were made (cow eye soup, by the way, has to be one of the most unappetizing dishes I've ever seen).
Now that the field trip is behind me, I have a series of tests this week. Tuesday is a team Iron-Chef competition. Either Wednesday or Thursday (I'm not sure which day I go) is my individual Iron-Chef competition. Wednesday is my final exam, Thursday is my product identification exam, and Friday, I have to deliver my individual project, which is to come up with an Asian-themed dessert. Asian cuisine doesn't really concentrate much on dessert, so this should be interesting. I'm not sure how it will all go, but I'll keep you all posted!
In the meantime, I have my yellow pepper, so ALLEZ CUISINE!!!
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