Greetings!
We are excited to welcome back to Stockton, Helen Chen for an exciting cooking class featuring her new cookbook, Easy Chinese Stir-fries.
Like so many of us, Helen Chen
learned to cook at her mother's side. But few of us had a mother like
Joyce Chen. Helen grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her mother
prepared the authentic dishes of her native Shanghai and Beijing with
the sort of regularity the rest of us came to expect of macaroni and
cheese or meatloaf.
"I remember when I was little,
watching my mother prepare meals for family and friends. I once wrote a
list of my favorite Chinese dishes," Helen recalls, "I came up with 150
recipes. I do not have one or two favorites. All the dishes on
variety. Taste, texture and
color all come into play, as does personality and culture. I think this
is what cooking is all about."
Soft spoken and intensely
intelligent, Helen Chen was born in Shanghai and moved to the U.S. with
her family while still a baby. Helen grew up, as she describes it, in a
traditional Chinese-American household. "When I was young I wanted to
be totally American," she remembers. "It wasn't until I was in high
school that I realized how lucky I was to have two cultures."
Today, Helen Chen is a widely
acknowledged expert in Chinese cooking. Besides her role as an educator
and cookbook author, she also is a corporate spokesperson and business
consultant to the house wares industry. In 2007 she created and
developed a new line of Asian kitchenware under the brand name Helen's Asian KitchenŽ, expressly for Harold Import Company in New Jersey.
Having been born in China and
raised and educated in the United States, Helen brings the best of both
worlds to her approach to the art of Chinese cuisine. She understands
the needs of the American cook as only a native can, yet she is
intimately knowledgeable in the culinary practices and philosophy of
China.
In her active role as a
teacher and educator, Helen teaches Chinese cuisine at Boston
University; and, through the Anderson Foundation's enrichment program
'Cooking Up Culture' she teaches Boston area school children from
grades 1-12 about Chinese cuisine and culture. She also teaches Asian
cuisine in numerous cooking schools across the country.
Helen has lectured to
various professional and culinary organizations such as the
International Association of Culinary Professionals, Boston University
Seminars in the Arts and Culinary Arts, Oldways Preservations and
Exchange Trust, Small Business Development Center, The Culinary
Historians of Boston, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs and the Culinary
Guild of New England. In addition, she conducts culinary tours of
Boston's Chinatown and is a frequent guest chef at cooking schools
around the U.S.
Helen is the author of Helen Chen's Chinese Home Cooking (Hearst Books, 1994), Peking Cuisine (Orion Books,1997) and Helen's Asian Kitchen: Easy Chinese Stir-Fries (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). A second book in the Helen's Asian Kitchen series, Helen's Asian Kitchen: Easy Asian Noodles is scheduled for publication in January, 2010.
Visit Helen's Blog
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Featured Chef
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Helen Chen
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Helen's New Cookbook
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$65 per Person
Includes Recipes & Tastings
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Cooking Class Will Be Held At Yosemite Meat Market
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915 Yosemite Street
Stockton, Ca 95203
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Please Call Beyond Pots and Pans To Register
(209) 952-1966
July 3 - July 20
Please email info@beyondpotsandpans.com to register.
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