{"id":22559,"date":"2024-05-19T14:33:18","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T14:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/?p=22559"},"modified":"2024-05-19T14:33:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T14:33:18","slug":"a-very-busy-end-to-april-and-start-to-may-passover-cooking-classes-a-kehillat-beijing-trip-to-the-ancient-observatory-an-anime-convention-and-so-much-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astronomerinbeijing.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/19\/a-very-busy-end-to-april-and-start-to-may-passover-cooking-classes-a-kehillat-beijing-trip-to-the-ancient-observatory-an-anime-convention-and-so-much-more\/","title":{"rendered":"A Very Busy End to April and Start to May: Passover, Cooking Classes, a Kehillat Beijing Trip to the Ancient Observatory, an Anime Convention, and so much more!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi Everyone,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome back to my Astronomer in Beijing blog! I hope you’re all doing well. For all of you in College Academia, I hope the end of the semester isn’t too hectic. For all of the Mother’s out there, I hope you had a lovely Mother’s Day! Although I wasn’t able to see my Mom on Mother’s Day, I’m very excited to have my parents and Jesse visit later this week! It’ll be so great to show them around Beijing (and Shanghai)! As you all know by now, my time in China is swiftly coming to an end. I’m in the process of packing up my apartment (definitely not the most fun thing, although Goldie likes jumping in the suitcases). I also just booked my flights to Italy. I’ll leave Beijing on June 22. It’s a bit surreal and sad that I know my time is almost over. That said, despite having a lot of paperwork\/forms\/reports that I need to do for both Italy and China, I’m trying to do some fun things, so I hope you enjoy hearing about them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passover in Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you remember, my last post was just before Passover, so that feels like a great place to start. This year, I co-lead the Kehillat Beijing Community Seder with my friends Kevin & Sam (we co-lead services every week, too!) at the Capital Club Athletic Center. We had about 80 people at the Seder and although there were a few hiccups in terms of corralling everyone to start, we had a lovely time! We really wanted to make sure that there was a lot of community participation, so we had ~ 30 volunteers do English and\/or Hebrew readings and I think everyone really enjoyed the Seder! This was my first time leading a Seder and while it definitely is a bit stressful (it’s harder when everyone isn’t around one large table – we had 10 tables), It was a lot of fun. We also had some lovely music provided for us by various Kehillat Bejing members (Chad Gadya, Let My People Go, Dayenu, etc), which added extra ambiance!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the second night of Passover, Roberta & Ted hosted a smaller Seder for the Kehillat Beijing board and a few other friends, which was equally lovely! We did the tradition of going around the table for reading the Hagaddah and I made my Mother’s Date Charoset as well as a Vegan Matzah Lasagna! Of course, Ted had delicious matzo ball soup and it was a fun night all around! It was a nice contrast, too, from the larger Seder to a more intimate one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vegans of Beijing Cooking Class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saturday before Passover, I went to another amazing Vegans of Beijing cooking class with Chef Chao at the Hutong Cooking School. This time, Richard and Tom joined me (and look at our aprons!)! Last month, Chef Chao taught us to make xianbing, a stuffed chinese pie\/pancake! Like with the baozi, jiaozi, and other doughs, this one was a bit tricky, although the dough was a bit easier to deal with (possibly due to the water content – but it was quite sticky!). We first mixed the dough by hand (it’s only flour, water, and a bit of salt – we use a high gluten flour for the stretchy-ness), before letting it rest. While our dough rested, Chef Chao taught us how to do the chopping for the different fillings. As always, his knife skills are amazing! Since the weather is quite warm now, we were able to do all of the prep-work and eating outside!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once the dough had rested, we needed to roll it out into thin circles which we then stuffed with three different delicious fillings! Similar to when we made jiaozi, each person was responsible for making a different filling. I made the pickled cabbage and rice noodle pie (I really like how Chef Chao uses the rice noodles to add some extra texture!). Richard made the Chinese chive and Tofu pie, and Tom made the carrot, mushroom, and cabbage pie! All three were very different and incredibly tasty (Especially topped with Chef Chao’s chili oil – I have that recipe, so I may need to try to make it when I’m in Italy, as I expect it’ll be a bit harder to track down chili oil). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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