According to Guo Yue, Chinese flautist and master dumpling-maker, there is a historic reason why Chinese people love food. "Until recently, people in China had very little. No TVs, nothing to amuse them. Food was their only form of entertainment. In the west, where people have more, food is less important."
Guo makes this observation while stirring water into a bowl of flour with a pair of chopsticks. It is Sunday morning, and he is giving a Chinese dumpling masterclass at Divertimenti, a kitchen shop in central London. Such workshops are becoming increasingly popular. Several establishments in London now offer one-off classes, giving amateur cooks the chance to learn from a professional about a particular country's cuisine.
Before the class started, I had assumed I would be one of its star students. I have some experience cooking professionally - I was assistant pastry chef for a while at Kensington Place, in west London - and I have been a keen amateur chef for years. Surely, I told myself, there can't be many people out there with better all-round cooking skills? I shouldn't have been so cocky. No sooner had we started than I realised I was up against some seriously stiff competition.
Matters weren't helped by Guo's tendency to turn every stage of the process into a test. First up was the race to finish the dough. Even though he had told us at the start that it was vital to stir the water into the flour slowly, he still awarded extra brownie points to those quickest to gather their flour into a uniform lump. Once we had accomplished this, he went from table to table inspecting the consistency of each person's product. "Yours is too hard!" he said, prodding mine. But at least I was spared the fate of the woman on my right, whose dough was judged too soggy - something which, Guo said, would result in "totally rubbish dumplings".
Next up was the stuffing. This brought our chopping skills into play. I am fairly proud of my chopping skills. Although I have never quite mastered the Jamie Oliver-style five-second carrot demolition, I have always believed that, with a knife in my hand, I bear more than a passing resemblance to a professional chef. That was until I saw the woman opposite me, an investment banker from Shepherd's Bush. As she effortlessly dissected a spring onion, Guo stopped us in our tracks. "Look, everyone," he said. "This woman is a seriously good chopper!" Ignoring the principle that most vegetables are chopped in exactly the same way, I put her superior handling of spring onions and ginger down to her being Chinese.
Once we'd completed the stuffing (minced pork, prawn, ginger, garlic, spring onion, soy sauce, rice wine), it was time to assemble the dumplings. This involved rolling out the dough into small rounds, placing a tiny spot of filling on to each, and then parcelling them up using an intricate folding method the mastery of which seemed to require an advanced degree in origami. As I struggled with my first attempt, I glanced over at the man on my left. Depressingly, he had already completed several perfect-looking parcels. "Hey," I said, "you've done this before." He shook his head. "I guess I'm just fairly practical. Here, let me show you how to do it."
By now I was completely dispirited. But worse was to come. Having cooked our dumplings, we sat down to eat them. Another competition now started: who could eat the most? I managed 25 - which I thought perfectly respectable - but there were people around the table who claimed to have put away 30 or more. Afterwards, the conversation moved to more general topics. Several people had been travelling in China, and they were soon discussing which regions they had visited and, more to the point, what they had eaten in those regions. As one man embarked on an anecdote about the time he'd been served a live rat in Mongolia, I realised, not for the first time that day, that I just couldn't compete.
Divertimenti, 33/34 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4PT (tel: 020 7486 8020; www.divertimenti.co.uk)
