11 Koreans, a Jew, and the story of Hanukkah

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I was bogged down at school with work (yay midterms!) and sleeping off a cold.

So for the next 3 weeks I'm teaching the Parent Classes at my English Center. We have class every Wednesday from 1:30-3:00 and I teach pretty much anything I want (within reason). The Parent Classes were divided between the 3 native teachers at my school and I'm the last teacher to teach them. When my co-teachers and I discussed the topics that we would like to teach when we taught the Parent Class, I decided that teaching a cooking class would be fun.

Can I cook? Sort of. I like the idea of cooking. I think I can follow a recipe pretty well (except for the mishap in college when I tried to make Kreplach...turns out that pastry dough and Wonton wrappers aren't the same thing). Let's just say my cooking ability is well beyond my singing abilities.

Anyway, I decided that I would love to teach English through cooking. Yet, what to make? Supposedly someone had taught Bruschetta back in the day. Delicious but didn't sound appealing to me. All of a sudden it hit me- LATKES. I really wanted to make latkes. Seemed easy enough: only a few ingredients, everything could be found in Korea, would taste like home, and I was teaching something from a different culture.

The day arrived for teaching the cooking class and I was pretty nervous. I couldn't remember how long it usually took to make latkes and I wasn't sure how much English I would really be teaching (mainly ingredients). I decided to leave Judaism out of the lesson and only teach some fun facts about Potato Pancakes (notice the name change, found predominantly in Eastern Europe, etc). An hour before my lesson a co-teacher told me that she was excited to learn about Hanukkah and Judaism in my cooking lesson. As you may imagine, there aren't many Jews in Korea and I was the first Jew that all of my teachers had met. Judaism...wait...what? That's when I made a mad dash back to my desk and created a power point telling the story of Hanukkah, Jewish customs, and how latkes fit into it all.

Teaching the cooking part was stressful but fun. Korea has a very similar pancake-like dish called 전 (Jeon) that can be made with beef, vegetables, seafood, kimchi, and much more, so everyone was pretty comfortable with the idea of making a Potato pancake. I gave them a recipe but we didn't have proper measuring cups so they just started doing whatever they wanted. All of a sudden all of the potatoes were chopped, all the onions were sliced, salt was being added here and there, and more eggs and flour kept being added to the bowls. I just gave into the madness. As long as they tasted slightly like potatoes we did a good job.

I ended up taking a total of two bites of the latkes. While the parents enjoyed their meals and listened to Hanukkah music, I delivered plates of fresh latkes to the school administrators, my fellow English teachers, and my principal. By the time I returned to the classroom, the parents had eaten everything. So while I made them feel guilty about not saving me anything I also felt really happy that they seemed to enjoy the food.

All in all it was a good lesson. I never really want to teach English by making latkes ever again but it was a good experience. I taught the story of Hanukkah, we talked about menorahs, and I listened to lots of Hanukkah music. And as an added bonus I got to keep all the extra cooking ingredients so I'll be making my own latkes soon enough.

Making latkes in the English Center kitchen

Giant latkes because the similar Korean pancakes are huge

The lone father in my class. In my opinion he made the best latkes.

I think my co-teacher took some pictures so I'll also ask her for those later.

Shalom!