Chop, Wok, & Talk cooking school focuses on Asian cuisine

by Karin Welzel, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Wednesday, October 5, 2005

"Faster, faster, faster!"

Fingers are flying as cooking students line up at a stainless-steel table fold meat filling into won ton wraps to make soup. Someone among the crowd wails, "Wait, you're going too fast!"

Dorothy Tague, director of Chop, Wok and Talk Chinese cooking school in Bloomfield, knows students will get the hang of the envelope-style wrapping technique the more they practice. But they don't have much time this evening -- in three hours, they will make Won Ton Soup, Pan Fried Won Tons, Shrimp "Swallows" with Sweet and Sour Cherry Lemon Dipping Sauce, Coconut Shrimp, Lemon Chicken, Kan Shaw Pork and rice.

And they get to eat it all, too.

Chop, Wok and Talk is Pittsburgh's only Chinese cooking school. Tague, who studied under former restaurateur and chef Anna Kao -- Kao owned a popular eatery along Freeport Road near Fox Chapel for many years -- is sharing what she learned from taking more than 50 classes from Kao, who has retired.

"Once you got into her classes, no one left," says Tague, a former vocal music teacher for the Shaler Area School District who founded Chop, Wok and Talk three years ago. When space ran out at their home, they converted an apartment over another business that she and her husband, Paul, own.

A former part-time beautician, Tague says the school is the "cooking portion of my life." And it's all for fun. She gets to use her teaching skills as well as delve into catering, offering party platters to full meals at the school, at Penn and Aiken avenues, or in private homes. Another retired teacher, Judy Jordan, who worked for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, assists her in prepping for the classes and cleaning up.

Tonight, Tague is orchestrating the second of three classes in a series that will offer hands-on training -- cleavers, hot oil and all. Students already made Lettuce Wraps, Hot and Sour Soup, Sweet and Sour Shrimp, and Fried Rice the week before. They drank plum tea; this week, it's lychee.

Tague offers three-class sessions as long as she has students. Eight is her limit because of space and her desire to do as much one-on-one instruction as possible. Most students come to learn how to make sauces as well as the general techniques of Chinese cooking, she says.

Lonnie Barton, of Stowe, is one of them.

"I love Chinese cooking," says Barton, a corporate planner who enjoys entertaining at home. "I want the sauces and to learn the nuances."

Mike Berdar, of West Mifflin, received his classes as a Father's Day gift.

"I'm here to learn the techniques," he says. "I cooked some Chinese things that didn't come out."

Although Diana Williams, of the North Side, lived in Thailand for 7 1/2 years and studied that culture's fare firsthand, she's here to garner recipes from its northern neighbor. This is her second session. After the first classes, she cooked four appetizers and five main courses for family and friends.

Most of the recipes that Tague shares came from or were inspired by Anna Kao, who has influenced other area Chinese cooking teachers. They include:

• Chef Susan Woolridge, who has taught classes in the culinary arts program at Westmoreland County Community College;
• Rita Wasilowski of Natrona Heights, who taught classes at Polly's Pantry in Sarver;
• Area restaurateur Richard Lee, who worked for Kao at her restaurant;
• And Kathy Yee, owner of Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine in Robinson Town Centre, also a former employee. Tague also studied classical cooking at the former Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts, now the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. She offers private classes and teaches Chinese cooking and dim sum for the Community College of Allegheny County.
  
  Chop, Wok and Talk was born "through a fluke," she says. Tenants from San Francisco who were renting an apartment from the Tagues had complained that they couldn't find good Chinese food in Pittsburgh. Tague offered to teach them if they bought the ingredients -- word spread, and soon people were paying for the privilege, she says.
  
  "I thought they were being polite when they said they loved the classes," she says, laughing.
  
  The best part is that profits are her "pin money," she says. "I don't have to do it. I enjoy it."