Masterchefs of Shanghai Cooking Class at the Hilton

Saturday morning saw me up bright and early heading to the Brisbane Hilton for the Masterchefs of Shanghai Cooking Class organised by Alison Alexander.

Alison is the mastermind behind Brisbane's well organised Masterclass series which will run again in 2010.

Two Shanghai chefs of high renown have been visiting Brisbane as part of the 20th birthday celebrations of the sister state relationship Queensland has with Shanghai. They were also drawing attention to Shanghai as the home of World Expo next year.

The chefs were Fuhua Chen, Deputy General Manager and chef at Shanghai Meilongzhen Restaurant and Kangyi Zhang, Chief Chef from Ya Wang (Duck King) Restaurant Group in Shanghai.

We were treated to a very impressive display of how to carve a Beijing duck - short version - carve the meat with a small strip of the delicious skin attached.

The chefs also enjoyed using local ingredients including Crystal Bay prawns and Murray Cod.
The recipes were fairly simple and after tasting the prawns, I'm definitely going to try it at home. Here's the recipe-

Dried Tomato Meilongzhen Prawns
serves 3 as an entree
9 deveined banana prawns
28g sweet glutinous rice (approx 1 1/2 tablesp) Wo Wo Wine Tasting Rice Brand
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup tomato sauce
vegetable oil
3 tsp ginger
1 tablespoon finely chopped green onion
1 tsp vinegar sprinkled over at end

  1. devein the prawns
  2. put a little oil in the hot pan and fry both sides of the prawns until about 60 percent cooked, remove from pan
  3. put tomato sauce, ginger, green onion, sweet glutinous rice into the pan. Stir fry until spices are combined. Cook down until the sauce is fairly dry.
  4. return prawns to the pan and stir fry until all ingredients are well done.
Recipe notes: Taste this recipe as you are cooking and adjust the seasoning to suit your own tastes. All the ingredients are available in Brisbane's Chinatown stores. You could use the sauce on a variety of other seafood. Try to buy the same brands as the chefs chose - check the photo.