Les Petits Chefs make steamed buns with Vanessa Yeung

Last week was Vanessa Yeung’s SIXTH visit to work with Les Petits Chefs (see below for a list of all the other dishes she’s made with them) and despite the fact that she’s KNOWN for her dumplings, this time she deviated slightly in her menu, offering the boys a chance to learn how to make steamed BBQ pork (or red bean) buns. So, kinda, sorta dumplings, but a little different. In my experience over the past four years teaching boys to cook and inviting guests to come and work with them, the dumplings have proven to be a crowd pleaser each and every time no matter what group of boys Vanessa works with and because the process for making the steamed buns is similar to that of dumplings, I knew these would be a hit with the boys too!

We started off making the dough. It was pretty sticky to work with but our dough-makers did a good job getting it to come together, then we got to filling them (even before Vanessa had finished explaining what to do – love the confidence of these boys!) – we had BBQ pulled pork and red bean paste to fill the buns and we made plain steamed buns too.

Despite it being fairly tricky to start with, the dough is actually incredibly easy to work with and the boys ended up making gorgeous, professional looking steamed buns, worthy of the best dim sum table… And of course, the hardest part was waiting for them to steam…

The boys left with a fair number of these (many of which didn’t even make it off the school property, despite my warnings that the filling was hot!) and I heard back the next day that they really enjoyed them. I am guessing many boys hadn’t eaten these before but that a few of them will be seeking them out next time they go for dim sum

Thank you Vanessa for coming out to spend some time with the boys again this term – we’re so lucky that the Toronto food community is so generous with sharing their knowledge with us.

Read more about the classes Vanessa offers on Aphrodite Cooks.

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Les Petits Chefs and Cooking Basics on Breakfast Television Toronto!

That’s right – last week, a group of members of both my cooking clubs – Les Petits Chefs and Cooking Basics, past and present, cooked on TV. They arrived at the school at 6am last Friday and cooked through five (!) live segments on Breakfast Television. Each group of three boys made a different dish – chicken tikka masala, vegetarian chili, spinach and ricotta gnocchi, shortcrust pastry with sweet and savoury fillings, Vanessa’s dumplings (of course!) and spaghetti and meatballs! It was definitely a little bit of a blur for me but the feedback I received (from SO many people) was extremely positive and many people commented on “how organised” everything looked. Indeed, the boys cooked clean, they problem solved and most of all, they had fun. And they showed everyone that kids can cook.

You can check out the first of their segments below (and the rest of them are linked at the end of this one). I’m so proud of the boys Enjoy!

(If you’re watching on a device that doesn’t support Flash, click here)