Living in Miami we don’t have a lot of great choices for Asian food, especially if you don’t want to break the bank. And besides that, you never know if there’s MSG in the food, there tends to be too much salt, and many dishes can often be greasy. So, when the chance presented itself to take an Asian cooking class — specifically wok cooking — from the Wok Star no less, and do our own cooking at home, Mr.W and I signed up.
The class is an unusual combination of casual socializing and cooking lesson. First, the social part since it’s the more uncommon in cooking classes. In advance of the class, Eleanor Hoh, the owner and teacher of Wok Star sends out an email with the names of all participants, something about each person (work, passion, etc.) and what s/he hopes to learn in the evening.
The class is held in a loft at 8101 Biscayne Blvd. in Miami. It’s owned by Casa Vinicola Zonin USA, the largest privately owned winery in Italy, which also provided the three very good wines accompanying the meal. Eleanor’s particular cooking style is about no recipes and easy to make dishes, my kind of thing. The evening started out with a chance to enjoy a glass of Prosecco and meet other classmates, a real mix of people which included a manager of a South Beach restaurant, a luxury hotel concierge, psychologist, travel writer and her retired husband who had worked in fund raising, software engineer from Brazil, and an entrepreneur who invented a recyclable ice sphere and was also a spinning class teacher (who coincidentally had taught me at the Sports Club/LA). Everyone was chatty and great fun to be with.
In the class itself we observed three dishes being made, with Eleanor inviting volunteers who wanted to actually cook. Dishes included Rainbow Lettuce Wrap Appetizer which was paired with Zonin Prosecco followed by a typical one dish dinner of a delicate Shrimp with Chinese Broccoli and Oyster Mushrooms paired with Rocca di Montemassi Astraio. Lastly and most popular was the Tilapia in a Spicy Brown Bean Sauce in an unusual pairing with Castello D’Albola Chianti Classico, which complemented the fish beautifully.
Everything was uniformly delicious, light, no MSG and she uses Japanese tamari.
Besides being the ideal hostess and a superb organizer, she’s an excellent teacher, demystifying the whole process, and sharing special time saving tips (my favorite was to put a plastic bag on the countertop next to the cutting board so you push the leftovers onto the bag and voila, it’s ready for the garbage).
Along the way, questions about the food and wine are welcomed (a very savvy marketing manager from Zonin USA was there to answer all the questions – like did you know that only sparkling wine from the Veneto region can call itself Prosecco?). We arrived at 6:30 and didn’t leave until 10 p.m. The class is $85 per person and well worth it. The proof of the pudding, the next night we put into practice our lessons learned and used a special kit (more on that in an upcoming post in Fabulous Friday) to stir fry our scallop and vegetable which took it to the next level. You, too can be a Wok Star!
One Response
As someone who’s traveled to Asia, I appreciate your insights to my approach to wok cooking. Love that you and W put into practice your Wok Star skills, thanks for coming.