Cooking with Students

I had a couple juniors offer to teach me a some Chinese dishes, so they came over for two lunches last week.

Cooking with students is a little chaotic.  They arrived at the door with bags in hand and a definite agenda of who would be cooking what.  Pretty soon they were washing, slicing, and chopping with a vengeance, as green onion stems and wayward pumpkin peels got tracked all over the kitchen floor.  Then it was time to fire up my two burners and a couple of woks.  An hour and a half after beginning, we sat down to enjoy pork with peppers, stewed pumpkin, a fried flat bread with vegetables, cabbage, and a crispy meat/garlic dish.

I *might* now remember how to make gan bian gan lan (a favorite spicy cabbage dish), but I'm afraid the rest of it has already flown out of my head.

Thanks to Tarah for this awesome shot.  Doesn't it kind of look like a promotion for a new reality TV cooking show?