One of the many advantages of studying at an international university is the diversity of the people you will encounter, as well as the richness of the shared knowledge.

I’ve always been curious about Chinese food —I drooled in front of many C-dramas dishes— and I wanted to learn new recipes. A quick message to my friend Mowei and fast-forward 4 days, we are in my kitchen prepping ingredients for our Chinese cooking masterclass on a Wednesday at 15.30.

Mowei had planned 3 dishes in the sweet and sour range as she didn’t know if we liked spiciness.

The first dish we had was crispy tofu: a wonder! As we bit into the tofu piece, the crunchiness was soon followed by the softness of the hot tofu.

The second dish was Kang Pao chicken. We also made a vegetarian version of this dish by substituting the chicken breast with a soja-based filet. The sauce was amazing! Sweet and sour, a bit thickened, it coated wonderfully the meat and vegetables. And I learnt that cucumber can actually be cooked!

The third and last dish was pan-fried mushrooms. It is maybe the easiest and quickest of the three recipes. The mushrooms’ tops are fried with an egg filling. Once again, delicious.

I will definitely make these recipes again. And who knows what the next cooking masterclass will be? Chinese again? Or Spanish, French, Portuguese, Turkish? The possibilities are endless, and with every recipe, I expand my horizon.

And yes, this whole post has been about food because that is something I really enjoy, but there are many other cultural exchanges to be made (poetry, card games, languages,…).

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