“When the raw gets cooked”
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.