Black Sesame Kitchen Dumpling Recipe on Bon Appetit
Come to Black Sesame Kitchen to spend the last day of the Year of the Dragon and welcome the Year of the Snake by making traditional dumplings.
The Black Sesame Kitchen team will be on hand to show you how to make dumplings.
The event is Saturday 9th February
Starting from 6-9pm
Join Black Sesame Kitchen for our Dumpling “Open House.”
The event includes a dumpling-making lesson, all-you-can-eat dumplings, beer, and mulled wine.
200 RMB per person
Register at reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com | +86.1369.147.4408 or on our web link
January and February Holiday Hours2012 has been a wonderful year at Black Sesame Kitchen. A lot of thanks to all the friends of the Black Sesame Kitchen who have supported us!
We will be closed the following dates during January and February 2013 months:
January
Closed from 1st to the 3rd January 2013 and re-open on the 4th January 2013 for our Friday Communal Wine and Dine Dinner.
No cooking classes will be held until 12th January 2013.
February
Closed from 10th to the 14th February and re-open on 15th February 2013 for our Friday Communal Wine and Dine Dinner.
We will be taking reservations for dates after the holiday breaks.
Please send your inquires by email to reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com.
FULLY BOOKED!!!
We do at times have cancellations, so please contact us so you can be on the wait list reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com
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New Year’s Eve Dinner – Monday 31st December
Come celebrate the end of 2012 in the hutongs! We’re holding a homestyle Chinese dinner at Black Sesame Kitchen on Monday 31st December starting 7pm with Chef Zhang and the rest of our team. In additional to a 10 dish set menu and hospitality we’re known for Chef Zhang will be doing a pulled noodle demonstration. Dinner will end around the usual 10pm so it’ll allow you to get to your next party destination!
Monday 31st December, 7pm
Dinner is RMB 500 per person
Bookings can be made at reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com or phone: +86 136.9147.4408
FULLY BOOKED!!!
We do at times have cancellations, so please contact us so you can be on the wait list reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com.
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In Beijing this Christmas and looking for an alternative to the usual holiday dinner?
We’re holding a homestyle Chinese dinner at Black Sesame Kitchen on Tuesday 25th Christmas Day with Chef Zhang and the rest of our team. In additional to a 10 dish set menu and hospitality we’re known for Chef Zhang will be doing a pulled noodle demonstration.
Celebrate in the hutongs with Black Sesame Kitchen!
Tuesday 25th December, 7pm
Dinner is RMB 500 per person
Bookings can be made at reservations@blacksesamekitchen.com or phone: +86 136.9147.4408
Black Sesame Kitchen is proud to announce their participation in this years November 10, 2012 Chifan for Charity event. All the proceeds for the dinner hosted by Shannon Van Sant will be donated to charity.
Chi Fan for Charity (CFFC) is Beijing’s premiere charity dining event. It takes the standard concept of a large gala charity dinner and throws it out the window! Instead, CFFC brings together Beijing’s top restaurants to each donate a table with a custom menu and a selection of wine. Tables are hosted by some of Beijing’s best-known personalities, some by associations and groups of friends. All seat sales from the 2012 event go to Little Flower Projects and The Starfish.
This year’s dinner at Black Sesame Kitchen is hosted by Shannon Van Sant.
Shannon Van Sant is a documentary filmmaker and reporter. She has filmed documentaries on Chinese and U.S. investment in Africa; factories in the Pearl River Delta; stem cell research in China and China’s petitioning system. She is a contributor to PBS television’s the NewsHour, Nightly Business Report and HDNet; she has reported from southern and eastern Africa and 20 provinces in China.
The cost for the dinner is RMB 600 per person. Save a seat at her table.
Chi Fan for Charity at BSK
Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure
Renown American Chinese culinary personality Ken Hom and British food writer and TV chef Ching-He Huang came to China to film their BBC series ‘Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure‘, which explores the in’s and out’s of Chinese food, from street snacks to the behind the scenes action in some of China’s best restaurants.
Black Sesame Kitchen was honored to have Ken Hom and Ching- He Huang make time to visit for a dumpling class with our very own Chairman Wang and Jen Lin-Liu, to learn how to make our signature dumplings.
If you’re planning on coming to Beijing to visit and not sure where to begin on your culinary adventure, the BBC series ‘Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure’ is a good place to start.
Watch Ken and Ching’s lesson with Chairman Wang starting from 25:35mins at this link.
If you’ve always wanted to know how to make dumplings, come join one of our cooking classes held every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings from 10am -1pm.
A cooking demonstration, hands-on session, and lunch are included. See our calendar on the right for our scheduled classes. Reservations required.
Would you like to participate in Beijing’s most creative and fun (golf) event ever? Black Sesame Kitchen does!
On Saturday, the 22nd of September 2012 between 2:00 and 6:00 pm Creative Hutong Golf will finally take place in Beijing’s coolest hutongs!
It is a fun event/challenge where participating teams are asked to complete creative tasks at as many of the 20 participating businesses as possible in order to ‘sink the putt’.
You can expect a fun, interesting and creative afternoon where you will get to meet new people, get to know the participating businesses and discover new hidden talents.
The challenges will be revealed on the day itself, but be prepared to use both your left and right brainpower to complete the tasks! Each team will consist of six to eight people. Each time a team will complete a challenge they will receive a score. The total points will be tallied at the end of the event and the team with the best score will win a special prize.
Ticket price is RMB 150 per person including drinks and snacks. To participate you must register before the event at www.unforgetty.com. Payment can be made on the day at the door.
This event is a non-for profit event. All proceeds will be donated to Chi Fan for Charity.
For more information on the Creative Hutong Golf Event and registrations for bookings, please visit www.unforgetty.com.
From Black Sesame Kitchen
After working hard all year to bring you our wine and dine dinners or seeing you at one of our cooking classes, Black Sesame Kitchen will be closed July 24 – August 6 2012 for a well deserved summer holiday break.
But don’t think we’ll be relaxing too much! Chef Zhang will be returning to his home province of Shanxi and everyone else travelling around China. So we hope to introduce you to some new dishes after the summer break. We are still taking reservations for after the summer break. Hope to see you after August 6th!
A few weeks ago the lovely people over at City Weekend came to the kitchen for a photo shoot on how to make zongzi for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival. With the help of our chefs, they have put together a fantastic article detailing both the wrapping and cooking method, as well as a comprehensive shopping list with prices.
This year’s Dragon Boat Festival falls on Saturday June 23rd. We will be serving zongzi to our guests at popular Wine n Dine events over the festival weekend.
Dragon Boat Festival: Zongzi 粽子
Zongzi (粽子) is a traditional Chinese food made of glutinous rice stuffed with various sweet and savoury fillings that are wrapped in bamboo, hemp or reed leaves and steamed. Traditionally, zongzi are eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival (端午节 Duānwǔ Jié), which, according to the lunar calendar, falls between late May and mid June (the fifth day of the fifth moon). The zongzi are eaten in commemoration of Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese poet who took his own life by drowning after the unbearable guilt he felt for failing to warn his kingdom of invasion. It is said that the local people threw parcels of rice into the Miluo river to keep the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body.
Ingredients Needed:
Red dates, date paste, sticky rice, sweet beans and hemp leaves . The main ingredients you’ll need are the sticky rice and the hemp leaves, and then you can pick whatever tasty fruit or meat you want to fill the zongzi with.
Before making zongzi, you first soak the rice in water overnight and soak the leaves in water for at least three hours. Some prefer to soak the leaves overnight as well, but as long as they’re soft and flexible, they’re good to go.
Ingredients for Zongzi Making
Start by folding the leaf at its stalk to make a sheet. Hold the leaf at one end, flat edge down, and fold it to make a funnel with the leaf. As you do this, be sure to push in the leaf at the bottom of the fold so there’s no gap or hole in the bottom of your funnel. Also make sure the shorter end of the leaf is on the inside of the pocket and the longer portion is on the outside.
Folding the leaf
First fill about two-thirds of the funnel with the soaked rice. Then you can add the stuffing of your choice. We used dates during our lesson with Chef Wang and placed two dates on top of the rice. For other ingredients, a tablespoon-size amount should do the trick. Top that off with a little more rice to finish out the filling.
Add the Insides
To close the leaf, wrap the long stem over the funnel opening by squeezing the sides of the opening and folding the long part of the leaf over the top. Make sure you don’t leave any gaps on the sides so the filling doesn’t spill out, and once the leaf is completely wrapped around, use leaf shreds or strings to tie the zongzi together.
Wrap it up
All that’s left now is to throw your nicely wrapped zongzi into a pot of water to cook. After boiling the water, turn the stove down to medium heat and leave the zongzi to cook for one to three hours depending on the size of the zongzi. You may need to add water throughout the process to ensure that the zongzi are always submerged in water.
Boil Away
~ Pictures and text supplied by City Weekend, Grace Carey and the hands of Chef Wang from Black Sesame Kitchen.
