Food & Drink: Dim sum class has tasty homework

Classes are small (12 people), and there are currently only six classes per month. Mahan is hoping to expand to eight a month in the fall. She runs her classes with a mix of authority and a good sense of humor gained by teaching cooking classes for the last 20 years. Her favorite students are people that don’t think they can cook anything. The people that think they can cook sometimes give her trouble; but, they come around. Mahan told me about a student that announced at the beginning of class that he made paella all the time at home and didn’t need to modify his dump-and-run paella cooking method. After trying Mahan’s carefully prepared paella, he asked, “Will you come to our house and do this?”

I registered immediately when I saw a dim sum class on the Class Cooking website. Mahan started the class by going through the rules. “The No. 1 kitchen rule is no blood,” she told us. Then, she demonstrated how to properly use the knives. Our knives were taken away about ten minutes into class because dim sum doesn’t require much chopping. Dim sum is all about folding. In two hours, we made five types of dim sum — steamed pork buns, spinach garlic dumplings, vegetable spring rolls, pot stickers and crispy wonton-wrapped shrimp. Mahan showed us how to make each type and made sure everyone tried to make several of each.

My favorite folds

My favorite dishes were the steamed pork buns, the spring rolls and the potstickers. The steamed pork buns had chewy, fluffy bao dough with a savory pork filling seasoned with five spice powder and hoisin sauce. To make them, we rolled out fresh dough, added a generous amount of pork filling, then tucked the dough at the top and spun it around to create a small, swirled cap. Finally, we placed them into a multi-tiered steamer.

The spring rolls had a fresh vegetarian filling of napa cabbage, water chestnuts, mung bean sprouts and tofu. We rolled the filling into lumpia wrappers and then deep fried them (rule two of the kitchen should be watch out for boiling oil).

We made the potstickers by placing wonton wrappers and a bit of the filling (Chinese sausage, chicken, shiitake mushrooms and napa cabbage) into a small plastic dumpling press that reminded me of a toy from a Play-Doh play set. Peggy Oliver (a regular at Class Cooking who drives from Portland for Mahan’s classes) shared my giddiness for this new toy. She giggled like a schoolgirl as she pressed her potstickers. After they were pressed, the potstickers were pan fried and then steamed with a bit of chicken broth.

When everything was ready, all of the students sat down to a dim sum feast (accompanied with sweet chili sauce, spring roll sauce and soy sauce) with Mahan and her dishwasher for the last six years, Maggie Williams. When I got home, I looked into getting a dumpling press ($5.99 on Amazon.com) and making a trip to Sorya market (Mahan has a stack of their businesses cards at the front of the school), which carries everything I need to re-create this feast. Afterward, I plan on sending my dim sum photos to Mahan to let her know that I’m not a lost cause.

Rachel Pinsky can be emailed at couveeats@gmail.com. You can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @couveeats.