202002201AIRA has organized events to introduce Abiko citizens the culture, society and dishes of foreigners living in Abiko.  These are good ways to enhance mutual understandings between Abiko citizens and people from other countries.  This time, AIRA offered Abiko citizens a chance to learn “boiled dumplings”, one of the most popular dishes in China. ( No. 19-27)
Date and Time:February   20, 2020 (Thu)  10:00 ~ 14:30
Venue          :  Cooking Room of ABISTA
Participants :  18 people ( Male: 4 , Female: 14)  5 AIRA staff members (Yuno, Komiyama, Ohsaki, Sakatsume, Araki)
Instructor     :  Ms.Zhang Hua (A member of AIRA,  Instructor for Chinese Advanced classes)
The cooking instructor for the Chinese family dishes was Ms.Zhang Hua from Northeast of China who can speak Japanese very fluently.
Speaking of dumplings, boiled dumplings are the most popular home-made dish in China and eaten as their staple food.  Boiled dumplings are originated in the North East of China.  They make and eat a lot of dumplings at a time.
 Menu
  1.  Boiled dumplings
  2.  Salad with bean sprout and cucumber
  3.  Stir-fry with tomatoes and eggs
  4.  Stir-fry with pork, Chinese cabbage, wood ear mushroom, and spring rain
The recipe of these dishes, please click here:
 pdfrecipe.pdf
Firstly, Ms. Hua roughly demonstrated the recipes and tasted  the dumpling sauce with all participants.
Then, a group of three cooked the four dishes.  Ms. Hua walked around all groups and offered some directions and tips for the dishes.
 The most unaccustomed work was to make dumpling skins.  First, make dough to a long rod shape and cut it into pieces to 202002206make small pieces, and then roll the each small piece six times with a rolling pin to make a round circle, adding your right hand to hold up an edge of the circle.  In wrapping fillings, the members struggled to wrap the fillings tidily in dumpling skins because some dumplings were not wrapped well.  In spite of this clumsy process, the each group made about 50 dumplings.
The members enjoyed talking  and tasting all four dishes including the boiled dumplings .
 AIRA advertized participants for this event in “The Newsletter Abiko” (the issue of Feb. 1, 2020) and 12 citizens took part in the event.  Many of them wanted to learn how to make dumplings from making the dumpling skin.
Additionally, speaking of dumplings, fried dumplings are popular in Japan.  In China, however, fried dumplings are considered as leftovers.  The members brought back the leftover dumplings to home and enjoyed them in fried dumplings.
 (Translated by Ms.Hitomi Koyama)

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