(By Sachiko Liou, J2A Teacher)

On April 5th, we had our eagerly anticipated annual cooking lesson. This year we made pot stickers. Although they originated in China, pot stickers are as popular as ramen and curry rice among the Japanese. There was a recent uproar in Japan when people suffered food poisoning after eating pot stickers imported from China. I wanted to show the students that they could make tasty pot stickers at home instead of buying frozen ones from the supermarket. When I chose pot stickers for the lesson, I was a bit anxious about the students’ ability to chop the vegetables and fold the filling into the wrappers. I was pleasantly surprised when many of the students used the knives very skillfully and handled the pot sticker wrappers with ease. Some of them did a better job than I did! Please enjoy reading the students’ impressions of their cooking lesson.

(By Yuri Walsh, J2A student)

On April 5, 2008 we made gyoza. My mom came to help make the gyoza. First we chopped the vegetables, which were cabbage, green onions, leeks, garlic and ginger. Then we got out the bowl and put all the ingredients in. We put in the cabbage, green onion leeks, garlic, ginger, ground pork, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, and a little bit of Japanese sake. After that we got out the gyoza skin and eggs. Then we got a bowl to stir the egg in. After that we started to mix all of the ingredients together. Then we put the gyoza filling in the gyoza wrapper, and we used the egg yolk to hold the gyoza together. It was a little bit hard and easy but it was fun with all my friends. It tasted deliciously juicy and even better with soy sauce. Mmmm… Delicious.