The general goals for this project include
Each of these areas will be investigated in parallel.
Our plan is to provide a thorough, hands-on introduction to the basics of Chinese cooking. Since most students are already familiar with Chinese-American cuisine but have little experience with traditional Chinese cuisine, cooking will focus primarily on traditional cuisine but will also address how traditional techniques and flavor principles can be adapted to a western kitchen. For example, students will create their own adaptation of a traditional western dish using Chinese flavoring and cooking techniques. We will have the class evaluate these and we will prepare the favorites on one of the last days of cooking.
To facilitate cooking and maximize student participation, enrollment is limited to twenty students. Even so, to keep things manageable, we will need to divide these students into two groups of ten that will cook on alternating days. Depending on what is being prepared, we will typically begin cooking around 9:00 each morning timing things so that the meal will be ready at noon. The students preparing the meal, instructors, and possibly a guest or two will sit down around noon and eat what the students have prepared. Several students may prepare the same dish in order to provide enough food and to better engage the students. On rare occasions, the group of students not cooking may also join us for lunch, but this will not happen often, and will only occur later in the Interim when students' cooking skills have developed enough to deal with cooking to feed larger groups. Lunch will be followed by cleanup.
Students not cooking will have unsupervised outside assignments such as reading assignments, making entries into their web log or blog (which will be required of each student), comparing recipes, documenting recipes, doing cost and nutritional analysis of recipes, watching instructional videos on Chinese cuisine, and reading an occasional Chinese film. In particular, while food isn't the dominant theme, it often plays a significant role in a number of Chinese films such as Eat Drink Man Woman, Joy Luck Club, or The Wedding Banquet.
Of the days that we will not cook, one or two will be set aside at the start of the course so that we can cover cooking fundamentals including measurement, knife skills, kitchen safety, and sanitation before we actually go into the kitchen. We will use the last morning of Interim to wrap up the course and will not cook that day.
To the extent that time permits, we plan to cover most basic cooking techniques including deep-frying, pan-frying, stir-frying, boiling, braising, steaming, poaching, and smoking. We will examine a number of different traditions dishes including soups, meats, vegetables, rice, dumpling, noodles, breads, teas, etc. We plan to introduce students to traditional techniques such as using a Chinese cleaver, bamboo steamer, and wok. Cooking will also include related tasks such as sprouting beans, making tofu from soy beans, etc. While we will focus primarily on traditional Chinese dishes, we will also experiment with Chinese-American cuisines and with adapting Chinese cooking and flavoring techniques to western kitchens and western ingredients. In each cooking session the students will prepare a simple but complete meal. We plan spend about sixteen mornings cooking so that each student will be involved in the preparation of around eight meals.
In order to better appreciate Chinese cuisine, we will use most afternoons (Monday through Thursday) discussing and presenting material that provides a context for examining and comparing cuisines. This will take two forms. Part of the time will be used to discuss cooking experiences such as planning for the next meal and discussing problems with the last meal. Most of the time, however, will be used to provide a broader context for Chinese cuisine. Topics will likely include
Additionally, students will be expected to learn several Chinese words and phrases related to food and manners each day. See Culinary Chinese. Students will be required to dine at at least two Chinese-American restaurants and return with take-out menus that can then be used in our discussions. We hope that this can be done over Christmas break so that we have a wide range of menus. We will have daily reading assignments and each student will be required to keep a blog and make timely entries. We will provide a brief introduction to blogging early in the course.
Total anticipate fees of $250 based on an enrollment of 20 students. This includes a $150 advance deposit in November that will be used to purchase equipment and supplies and reserve the bus. In general, funds will be used to
Any unspent funds will be refunded.
We anticipate most of the reading assignments will either be handout, available over the Internet, or available through electronic reserve from Wofford's library. At this time, we do not anticipate requiring the purchase of a text. However, we reserve the right to require a text should this become necessary. The cost of a required text, if any, would certainly be less than $50. Still, students my wish to purchase related books. See Required and Recommended Readings.
Students should also budget $20-$30 for two meals at local Chinese-American restaurants.
Attendance and participation will be required of all students. Required participation will include:
Please keep in mind, cooking-possibly several hours at a time-can be as physically demanding.
Students will be graded Honors, Pass, Unsatisfactory. The primary criterion for Pass is active participation in the course in the areas listed above. Failure to adequately participate in any one of these areas will constitute grounds for an Unsatisfactory grade for the course. Students with excused absences will be required to do outside work to make-up missed classes. Students desiring a grade of Honors will be given the option of completing additional projects.
Makeup Paper
To minimize the possibility of having to award a failing grade in the Interim, we have decided to allow students to write a makeup paper should they miss work. Students that do not miss any work will not need to write this paper; it is only for those that need to make something up. We hope no one will actually need to write a paper.
Basically, it works like this—each activity in the Interim will be assigned a page value. If you fail to participate in an activity, the page count for your paper will be increased by the page count for the missed activity. This is, infractions are cumulative. Here is a partial list of page count values:
Unexcused absence from a lecture/discussion session: 2 pages per hour missed
Unexcused absence from a cooking session: 6 pages
(Excused absence: no penalty or zero pages)
Failing to do a days reading assignment: 1 page
Failing to make at least two blog entries per week: 1 page for each missed entry
Failing to email cooking experience or background: 1 page
Failing to turn in a takeout menu: 1 page
Students initially start with a page count of zero.
This mechanism will give you an opportunity to makeup missed work and will prevent us from having to award a failing grade for a really minor infraction. Of course, it you fail to submit the paper or if it can’t be given a passing grade, you could still fail.
You will be advised by email each time you page count increases. Papers will be due the final day of Interim.
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Last modified: October 29, 2008
Contact: Joe Sloan, sloanjd@wofford.edu