Cooking With Joyce Jue!

This past weekend, I had the chance to take an online cooking class over Zoom with a close family friend of mine, Joyce Jue. Joyce Jue has been cooking Asian food for her whole life, learning from her mom, and has written numerous cookbooks detailing some of her favorite recipes and how to make them. She has travelled around Asia and Europe to better her cooking skills and has also wrote articles for many newspapers and magazines including the San Francisco Chronicle. It was an absolute pleasure to cook with her and I definitely learned a lot! So, here is what we cooked in the class and what I thought about it overall.

Overview Of The Class:

You can find out more information about Joyce Jue and Register for her zoom cooking classes here: https://www.joycejue.com/

Joyce just started doing these group cooking classes over Zoom and boy are they a hit. For her first series of classes, she did three classes that focused on Chinese cuisine and dim sum. She is planning to do another series of classes soon detailing how to make Thai dishes such as Green Curry and Miso Marinated Salmon. Each class is about an hour and 30 minutes, which does not include time to prep beforehand, and during each class you make two dishes. The classes are super reasonably priced ($32 per class) as Joyce has plenty of experience and tricks to tell you throughout the class that will allow you to learn new skills. Upon registering for a class through her website, you will receive a zoom link for the event and the recipes with ingredients. For my class, I bought my ingredients a day before so that everything would be fresh and then prepped everything about two hours before to be ready on time. When the class starts, Joyce gives a quick introduction and then immediately gets into it, showing you how to cook the dish. She tries to make the two dishes in an hour so that the group can have time to talk with her at the end about anything they want. If while you are cooking you have a question about how to do something, you can unmute yourself and ask. So, what did I make during my class with Joyce?

Green Onion Pancakes and Sui Mai!

For my cooking class with Joyce, I had the pleasure of making two dim sum classics: Sui Mai and Green Onion Pancakes. Some of my favorite dim sum restaurants in San Francisco serve both of these dishes to perfection and I did not think that I could even come close to how good they are with my dishes. But I was wrong as Joyce’s recipes and tips allowed me to make some dim sum that was really close to the actual thing. The Green Onion Pancakes were crispy and had awesome green onion flavor. The Sui Mai combined fresh shrimp with pork and a soy sauce mixture and tasted super fresh. Furthermore, both of these recipes were super easy to make and only require a few ingredients. To top it off, Joyce added some of her own tips and tricks that were not even in the recipes to allow for the dishes to be even better. So, here are the steps I took and ingredients I used to make the Sui Mai and Green Onion Pancakes with Joyce Jue.

Green Onion Pancake Recipe (courtesy of Joyce Jue): https://files.bookwhen.com/5nihebwxqga2/64ab2bs1edmw/uploaded_file

Sui Mai Recipe (courtesy of Joyce Jue): https://files.bookwhen.com/5nihebwxqga2/gz71ifxy8fpp/uploaded_file

Green Onion Pancake Ingredients:

• 3 Cups flour and a bit extra for dusting on top of the dough
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/4 cup cold water
• asian sesame oil for brushing onto the pancakes– about 6 tablespoons or a bit more
• 2 bunches chopped green onions
• canola oil for frying the pancakes– about 2 tablespoons

For The Dipping Sauce:

• 3 tablespoons light Chinese soy sauce– you can also just use regular soy sauce here
• 1 teaspoon Sriracha sauce
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 green onion, chopped

Sui Mai Ingredients:

• 5 shiitake mushrooms– cut off the stems and finely chop the caps
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1/4 pound peeled and deveined shrimp- cut into 1/4 inch pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• white pepper to taste- if you want it
• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce– you can use regular if you cannot find light at your local store
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• freshly grated ginger to taste
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 green onion- the white section of it, minced
• 3 tablespoons minced bamboo shoots
• about 20 wonton or Sui Mai wrappers- if you are using wonton wrappers, cut the corners off to make them round
• 1 or 2 Bamboo steaming baskets

Prepping And Cooking The Sui Mai And Green Onion Pancakes:

I am writing this in the order that Joyce made the items during the class which means that I am not necessarily following every step in the recipes linked in order. If you would like to follow the recipe in order, please click the recipes I have linked above.

• Making The Dough: Boil your water using either a tea kettle or pot on the stove. While waiting for the water to boil, proceed to add the three cups of flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the bowl of a food processor. Once that has been added and your water is boiling, proceed to start up your food processor. Once it is going, add the boiling water through the feed tube. After adding the boiling water, let the processor go for about five to ten seconds until the dough is pulling away from the sides. At that point, add the cold water through the feed tube and let the food processor whirl until a rough ball forms. If the dough looks a bit wet at this point, add a bit of flour and let the work bowl spin for a few extra seconds. Once a rough ball forms, turn off the food processor and remove your dough onto a lightly floured surface. Proceed to knead your dough for a minute until it is nice and smooth and no longer sticky. Once that point is reached, place your dough in a bowl and cover it with saran wrap. Let rest for at least 30 minutes.

• Making The Sui Mai Filling: While the dough for the green onion pancakes is resting, proceed to clean and dry your food processor work bowl. Once clean, proceed to add the pork, shrimp and mushroom caps to the work bowl. After doing that, in a separate bowl combine the sugar, salt, white pepper, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, grated ginger, sesame oil and cornstarch. Stir mixture well with a spoon and proceed to add to the food processor with the meat mixture. After combining the ingredients, add the green onions and bamboo shoots to the food processor as well. Proceed to run the food processor for about 10 seconds to get the mixture combined and finely chopped.

• Wrapping the Sui Mai: After making the shrimp and pork mixture for the Sui Mai, it is time to wrap it into the wrappers. First, lightly oil the bottom of one or two bamboo steamer baskets with canola oil. After that, proceed to put a tiny handful of the meat mixture in the center of the Sui Mai wrapper. I would highly recommend using less meat mixture than you think here as that way the dumplings will be easier to close after. After adding the mixture onto the center of the wonton wrapper, there are two possible ways to fold them. One way to wrap it is to pinch all of the sides of the wrappers around the filling and to leave the top open, basically forming a basket. Another way to wrap it is to fold the wrapper in half over the filling and then pinch the top, basically making a potsticker type dumpling. Either way works just fine but the more traditional way is to form a basket like thing with the top open. Anyways, after picking a way to wrap your dumplings, proceed to wrap about 10-15 dumplings, filling up your bamboo steamers. I made a mix of potsticker style dumplings and traditional Sui Mai.

• Steaming The Sui Mai: Once you have wrapped your Sui Mai, boil about 3 cups of water in a wok. You may need more or less water depending on where the base of the bamboo steamer ends up. Basically, you want enough boiling water so that it comes right below the basket. Once the water is boiling, place your basket in the wok and cover it. Let cook for ten minutes. After ten minutes, take the steamer out, open it up and enjoy! Serve your dumplings with soy sauce.

• Forming The Green Onion Pancakes: After your green onion pancake dough has been resting for 30 minutes, proceed to remove your dough from the covered area and place it on to a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough until it is smooth and not sticky anymore. After kneading the dough, cut it into roughly four to six pieces depending on how big you want your pancakes to be. I cut mine into four pieces as I thought six would make my pancakes too small. Once you have cut your dough, Take one of the pieces and proceed to roll it out into a thin rectangle shape using either a rolling pin or cup on its side. For this step, the thinner the dough the better as it will allow it to get super crispy when cooking it. After rolling the dough out, Brush some sesame oil around the whole thing. Once you have brushed the sesame oil, it is time to sprinkle some salt and green onions all around. While doing this step, you really want to make sure that you get green onions everywhere so that they are present in every bite. After spreading out the onions and salt, proceed to roll the dough up long ways into a long log. Once you have a log, hold one end of the dough and push the other end in, forming a spiral and essentially making a ball once again. It is ok if some onions pop out here, it is completely normal. After forming the spiral, tuck the ends of the dough in and let rest for 20 minutes. While waiting the 20 minutes, repeat the process of forming the pancakes for the remaining pieces of dough you have left. After 20 minutes, proceed to roll out your spiral into a seven inch pancake that is super thin using your rolling pin or cup. Cover the pancake and repeat the process for the remaining ones.

• Cooking The Green Onion Pancakes: After forming your pancakes, it is time to cook them! First, heat a non- stick deep bottomed skillet on medium heat. Once it is hot, add just enough canola oil to cover the bottom of the pan and a bit extra but not much. Add your green onion pancake and cook until each side is golden brown, About 2 minutes. If the pan is looking a bit dry, add some more oil. Once the pancake is golden brown on each side, pull it out and place on to a plate with paper towels. Repeat the same process for the remaining pancakes. While the pancakes are cooking, make your dipping sauce by combining the ingredients listed for dipping sauce above in a small bowl. Once all your pancakes are cooked and your dipping sauce is made, enjoy your pancakes!

Final Thoughts:

All I can say is wow. This cooking class with Joyce Jue was super fun and a great introduction to cooking Asian cuisine. Before going into this class, I always thought of Asian food as requiring many ingredients, lots of prep and taking lots of time. But, Joyce and her class taught me that Asian cuisine does not always have to be difficult and that you can actually make it seem very simple. The main difficulty with this class was the pinching of the dumplings and making sure the pancake dough was thin enough. But, those hardships did not stop me from making great food. The pancakes were super thin and crispy and the Sui Mai tasted almost like restaurant quality. Please take the chance to go to a class with Joyce Jue if you can. She has worked her whole life to gain experience in Asian cuisine and it shows with how simple and easy she is able to make things and the tips she gives you throughout. Thank you so much Joyce and I am really looking forward to making Thai Curry with you soon!