Cookery Classes and the Good Life

“There are three types of meringue. The lemon tart we are making today calls for Swiss meringue. It’s made by heating egg whites and sugar in a double boiler to 50°C and then beating them with a mixer at high speed....”

It’s early one Saturday morning, and the cooking classroom at Mise en Place in eastern downtown Tai­pei is filled with the scents of lemon crème and freshly baked tart shells. More than a dozen young women are carefully following the dessert instructor Alex’s instructions to make cream and apply meringue.

One of the students, Ms. Liu, says with a smile that when a dessert she makes is both delicious and beautiful, she feels a sense of accomplishment that she can’t put into words. Also, to make the desserts here, you don’t need to go out and buy the ingredients or clean up afterward, so it’s a much more pleasant experience than trying it in a cramped home kitchen.

It’s hard to put into words the sense of accomplishment that comes with making your own dessert, and it’s a must to take a picture to show off to friends.

On another day, Park Kitchen in Tai­chung has invited Japanese “­otaku chef” Ma­saru Ya­ma­shita (Masa) to demonstrate how to make creative Japanese dishes like free-range chicken ­oyako don­buri and sake-steamed paper-wrapped cod. Standing at the center of the kitchen counter and surrounded by housewives-turned-students, Masa looks like a pop star. No matter what sort of finely detailed work he’s doing, like cutting vegetables, beating eggs, soaking ­kombu, or filtering soup stock, there’s the constant flash and click of cameras around him. Every once in a while he exclaims something in Japanese-inflected Chinese like “Tofu is easy-going and cooperates well with most other ingredients,” always getting smiles from the crowd.

These high-end cooking schools have several things in common. They usually feature bright and open kitchen counter islands, imported stainless steel cooking implements, pots, ovens, and steamers worth several million NT dollars, carefully selected local and imported ingredients, and elegant dining spaces. They are most popular in metropolitan areas like Tai­pei and Tai­chung, where there are roughly 20 or 30. In addition to stand-alone classrooms, there are also hotels, restaurants, department stores, and high-end supermarkets getting into the business. Though at NT$1,000 to 3,000 a session the classes are not cheap, students are flocking to them.

As the British historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto wrote in his book Food: A History, “Culture begins when the raw gets cooked.” Food and drink as well as preparation methods are intimately connected to the development of human civilization. People’s motivations for learning to cook, the methods they use, and the types of dishes they make all follow the pulse of society, and the cooking classrooms are no exception.

The origins of the current flood of cooking classes in Taiwan can be traced back to 1962, when Fu Pei­mei—known as “the Julia Child of Taiwan”—began hosting cooking shows on Taiwan Television. These included the well-received A Dish a Week, Weekly Meal, Family Cookbook, and Fu Pei­mei Time.

Food writer Yeh Yi­lan, who loves to cook and once studied baking, says that as Fu Pei­mei gained fame in the 1970s, there were already several beginner-level cooking classes. Most of the students were housewives or brides-to-be whose goals were to cook three meals a day for their families. Accordingly, the classes were centered on cooking homestyle Chinese or more refined banquet-style dishes.

The Japanese chef Masa, known as “the Otaku chef,” runs a popular course on Japanese-Western ­fusion cuisine.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Taiwan’s cooking classrooms mainly taught Chinese-style cooking, and classes were taught like cram-school sessions focusing on practical skills. In 1993, Ko Ruey-ling, a Taiwanese graduate of France’s Cordon Bleu school who was also made a chevalière of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French ­government, opened the French cooking school Le Gourmet on Tai­pei’s Xin­sheng North Road. With this, the scope of Taiwan’s cooking education was formally expanded to include Western styles.

Ko recounts that in the early years her students were housewives whose husbands had business ties to France or were stationed in Taiwan by their companies. These well-off ladies’ biggest problem was figuring out how to make French cuisine with local ingredients, so the main point of her lessons was how to use items such as yellowfin seabream and water bamboo shoots together with classic French sauces to make authentic French cuisine.

In addition to cooking, Ko also teaches French table manners, table setting, how to store away high-end tableware, and the cultural background behind menu planning. The classes are not cheap at NT$3,000 each, but their thoroughness keeps them filled with students.

Students record every step with smartphones and cameras—must-have tools for the class.

High-end cooking classes first took off in well-to-do housewives’ circles, but by the late 1990s, they found a wider clientele.

This phenomenon can be seen reflected in the sales and diversification of cookbooks. Yeh Yi­lan recalls that even over a decade ago, cookbooks were a flourishing segment of Taiwan’s publishing market, and their range had expanded beyond the homestyle Chinese cooking of Fu Pei­mei and ­Liang Qiong­bai. Bestselling cookbooks encompassed Western food like Italian cuisine, baking, and desserts.

That “cookbook fever” reflects the growing number of foodies in Taiwan.

Yeh believes that this transformation of cooking from household chore to lifestyle and leisure activity is due to the exploding number of working married women. (In 1978, only 39% of married women worked; by 2000, it was 46%.) With fewer housewives, there will naturally be fewer people learning to cook just to serve their families.

Moreover, the urban lifestyle, with its abundance of dining options, created a situation in which more and more Taiwanese eat out. With a restaurant every few steps, it’s easy to simply grab a meal when you’re hungry. “Home cooking,” meanwhile, took on the connotations of healthfulness, lifestyle, and leisure.

So a new generation of foodies decided to pick up cookbooks and follow instructions to cook for themselves. But in that process, they were sure to run into problems: “How long do I beat the egg whites?” “How do I control the temperature to give the risotto that al dente texture?” Thus, the cooking classroom was born.

“People are more familiar with Chinese cooking, so it’s easier to find answers. But with Western food, like baking bread or making desserts, you often eyeball it. You have to go through it with a professional one time in order to get it,” says Yeh.

Homestyle dishes from around the world that are as pleasing to the eye as the taste buds. cold tofu served with rape florets and pollock eggs.

As we enter the 21st century, food culture is entering the mainstream worldwide. Cooking shows fill the airwaves, and knowing something about food or cooking has become a marker of lifestyle. Naturally, people would be more willing to pay top dollar to satisfy their tastebuds as well as their eyes and ears. As places for cooking, exchanging knowledge about food, and enjoying a sophisticated lifestyle, high-end cooking classrooms are products of a social trend.

Founded in 2005 with an investment of tens of millions in fixtures and decor, ­Tianmu’s Cooking Studio hired Zeng Xiu­bao, a former head chef at Tien Hsiang Lo restaurant in Taipei’s Landis Hotel, as well as several chefs from five-star hotel and Michelin-star restaurants, to demonstrate cooking techniques. Right after class, students could enjoy the renowned chefs’ dishes. The sessions were a hit among local high-fliers, and the famed writer and food fan Li Ang was once a special guest at one.

4F Cooking Home, located on Tai­pei’s Yong­kang Street and formed in 2009, has warm, unfinished wood furnishings, and its interior design and its menus have a storybook feel. These qualities make the high-end cooking classroom more accessible to the average person. Their classes also have a specially crafted feel—for example, there was a “Literary Cuisine Promotion Class” based around Norwegian Wood, a novel by the Japanese author Ha­ruki Mu­ra­kami. With these, they have captured the tastes of yuppies and young intellectuals.

Mise en Place, opened in 2010, is for “advanced level” foodies. “‘Mise en place’ was originally French for ‘putting everything in its right place,’” says founder Elaine Tseng. “Later it became a specialized term among chefs meaning preparations before cooking.” Students here don’t have to be troubled with tedious prep work or cleanup, nor do they have any pressure to feed a hungry family. They simply take in the joy of cooking.

Homestyle dishes from around the world that are as pleasing to the eye as the taste buds. a classic French lemon tart.

According to food writer Xu Zhong, who holds a master’s ­degree from Italy’s University of Gastronomic Sciences, once a country’s food culture reaches a certain level, people will look for pleasure not just in the food itself but in the way the food is attained. “High-end cooking classrooms are actually part of an ‘experience economy,’” he says.

A blogger named Liz, who has attended classes at many of the classrooms, says that modern cooking classrooms operate by offering a vision of a perfect life. “If, after class, the students walk away thinking, ‘In the future I will cook like that and my kitchen will be set up like that, and I’ll set my tableware like that...,’ then the classroom has succeeded,” she says.

Yeh takes her analysis a step further. In recent years there have been a number of food safety scares, and droves of people who frequently dine out have headed back to their kitchens. That means that no matter what kind of cuisine is taught, the actual dishes are almost always ones that can be easily made at home.

“But the homestyle cooking that’s popular now is not the Chinese stir-fry of yesteryear,” Yeh says, “and the homestyle cooking of every country in the world has become part of our daily lives because of the movement toward diversity in food. Since cuisines such as Mediterranean or Japanese stress simple preparation and quality ingredients, they’re a better fit for the healthful eating that modern people seek.”

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the godfather of French food writing, two centuries ago. When you can easily make a table full of dishes and you know the cultural background behind them, you have become a person of discerning tastes. As a marker of changing lifestyles, this culinary fever is worth consideration.

Cooking classrooms offer tastebud tourism that combines picture-postcard-pretty recipes with luxurious learning.

Students bring class to a close by enjoying their handiwork together in a beautiful kitchen.

When cooking in a modern cooking classroom, there’s no prep work or cleanup to worry about. Simply enjoy the process.

Spanish garlic shrimp.

Classes that stress table setting and fine flavors are a sign of the kind of lifestyle modern people seek.