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Cook-It-Yourself Taiwanese Night Market Food

In a cooking class organized by the non-profit Women's Workshop Friday, 240 local residents learned how to make eight Taiwanese night market specials at home.

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Note: a demonstration of how to make pumpkin rice noodles is in a video clip attached to this article.

Street vendor food is hot, and the Taiwanese equivalent—night market food—has fans all its own in Taiwanese residents and tourists alike.

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Given the large number of Silicon Valley residents who are from or have been to Taiwan, the local non-profit Women's Workshop presented a cooking class Friday on how to make at home seven savory dishes and a dessert from Taiwanese night markets.

According to Elaine Han, founder and president of the Cupertino-based Women's Workshop, the class was hugely popular. It was set for 200 people, ended up with 240, with more still on the waiting list. Attendees came from South Bay cities including Campbell, Cupertino and Los Altos. An overwhelming majority of them were women.

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Women's Workshop, is called mother's classroom in Chinese and offers courses in various types of homemaking skills.

The class, held at China Stix Restaurant in Santa Clara, was sponsored by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco, which invited famous chef Ching-Lung Huang, nicknamed "Prince of Taiwanese Cuisine," from Taiwan to teach in Mandarin.

Huang demonstrated how to cook seven Taiwanese night market dishes in class. When each dish was done, it was divided into bite-sized servings, and served to attendees in little cups.

The sequence of the lessons were based on the geographic locations of the dishes, from north to south. 

The seven savory dishes are: crab soup from Keelung (the northernmost city of Taiwan), squid soup from Taipei's Shi-Lin Night Market, sesame oil noodles with shredded pork from Taipei's Yuan-Huan Night Market, salt and pepper fried chicken from Fengchia, stir-fried chicken over rice from Chiayi, seafood porridge from Kaohsiung, and pumpkin rice noodles from Archipelago Penghu off the westcoast of Taiwan.

While cooking, Huang gave pointers on how to simplify recipes for home cooking. For instance, he said it's hard to do a quick stir-fry at home because home stoves can't reach the same high heat as in professional stoves, but a quick dip in boiling water can also keep squid tender, and is healthier.

Huang also presented a popular Taiwanese dessert, taro tapioca pudding with coconut milk, which because it must be served cold was prepared outside of the classroom setting, so he gave step-by-step verbal instructions instead.

The bite-sized samples of Huang's cooking seemed to appeal to the crowd.

All the dishes Huang made tasted great, said Campbell's Amy Chen.

"I used to love night market food when I lived in Taiwan," said Chen. "I'm happy to learn how to make it at home. The teacher makes it seem totally doable."

Rebecca Yang of Los Altos also said she enjoyed the cooking class.

"I'm a new homemaker," said Yang. "I used to work full-time and hardly cook. Now I cook a lot, so I need a class like this to learn how to cook better."

Both Chen and Yang are members of Women's Workshop, which regularly offers cooking classes as well as courses in other homemaking skills. Most of the cooking classes are small, taught by local residents, but the nonprofit invites a famous Taiwanese chef to teach a large class once a year.

For information about future cooking classes of Women's Workshop, contact Elaine Han at kaoelaine@gmail.com.

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