This year’s Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) began on February 16. Ms. Zhang Hua, Chinese instructor, held boiled gyoza cooking class during Spring Festival. (No.17-28)

Date: 10:00a.m. – 2:00p.m. on February 18 (Sun), 2018
Venue: Cooking room at Abista
Participants: 14 people in advanced class in Chinese language course (Ms. Zhang Hua, and 13 students)

Spring Festival is New Year holidays in the lunar calendar. Since these are the most important holidays in greater China, they are celebrated more prosperously than New Year in the solar calendar. During this festive period, lots of people go back to their hometowns, or go on a trip all at once, which makes transportation very crowded.

Ms. Zhang who came from China instructed how to cook boiled gyoza.
Gyoza is food indispensable for Spring Festival in Northern China. Family members gather and eat it together. Unlike Japanese, they don’t fry gyoza, but boil it. They eat it as the main dish, not as a side dish. That’s why they cook plenty of gyoza
.
At first, the participants made gyoza skin. All of them kneaded dough. It was a heavy work. In China, jujube or peas are stuffed in gyoza skin. But here in Japan, they stuffed Chinese cabbage and Chinese celery instead as ingredients they could easily get.

In addition, they cooked fried tomato with egg (a home-cooked dish in the North East region in China), fried dried soy bean curd, fried Chinese cabbage pickles, and chopped Chinese cabbage dressed with sauce, and fried strips of potato.

The participants had a good time talking about festive fish, rice cake and money gift for Spring Festival over the dishes they cooked.

(Translated by Rie Hama)