Customer Comments
Here are some comments and reviews from our customers...
January 2012
Dear Jodie,
Wee Ling said from now on when she climbs a stair, she will think of Elephant mountain.
Thanks for the wonderful experience.
Best regards,
Joyce
December 2011
Hi Jodie,
My husband and 2 sons enjoyed our dumpling class with you so much! I just got my photos developed today and as we went through then we recalled your class. My youngest son, a notoriously picky eater, said your recipes created the best meal he had in Taiwan and when we discussed the trip's highlights my husband and boys all mentioned your cooking lesson.
You were gracious and knowledgeable and I thank you again for offering your home and your skills to visitors.
Sincerely,
Connie
September 2011 
Dear Jodie,
Thank you so much for the wonderful cooking class and for teaching me and my friends all the wonderful recipes! We had a fantastic time! I will most definitely be making another trip back to Taiwan! I attached the pictures we took in your home.
Also, thank you for the copies of your recipes and for the rolling pin! We will definitely be using them around here and making the dishes for our friends! And if you ever make another trip to South Korea, just send me an email and I would love to meet up with you! Take care!
Sincerely,
Sarah
August 2011
Dear Jodie,
Hello
This is Chiaki from Japan.
Thank you very much for your fabulous cooking class last week!
You just taught me something new, I did not know before.
I felt as if I visited one of my old friends and enjoyed cooking and talking.
It was so lovely moments for me.
I am back to real life, after summuer vacation!
I didn't cook dumpling you tought yet...
I'm gonna try it next Saturday .
If I could take long vacations in Taipei next, I'd like to apply for another cooking calss.
Hope everything fine with you.
Chiaki Jitsuhara
August 2011
Hi Jodie,
Thank you so much for your wonderful dumpling class on July 23, 
2011.
It was one of the best experiences I have had in Taiwan in my three years of retuning to the country.
Back at home, my mother, brother, and I successfully made dumplings, sauce, and cucumber salad.
(We even sawed a broom stick into pieces to make rolling pins as our pastry pin was far too large.)
I will have to work on the onion pancakes though, I think that I didn't make the dough thin enough to cook properly.
Thank you again for such an incredible experience. Best of luck to you!
Sincerely,
Sarah
August 2011
Thanks for the photos. The hiking one is really, really nice :-) 
I enjoyed the class a lot, well worth it. It was really nice to
especially find out how much flavour I could add just with fruits and
vegetables. Especially the Hot and Sour soup base was really good.
After comparing few places, your soup base really beat up the local
restaurants.
If you wanna take a look yourself too, you can find it here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113836984745835119357/CookingClassTaipei
Hope you had a nice start of the week!
Teemu
July 2011
ジョディーのおかげでとても楽しいひとときでした。選んだのはソース中心のコース（クラス１）。一緒に作るたくさんの料理はどれも味のバランス(甘味・酸味・塩・スパイシーさ)を考えかつヘルシーなものばかり！すごくおいしいです！！！
料理に使う材料は日本でも簡単に手に入るものばかりです。説明も懇切丁寧なので、これなら家でも作れそう！って思いました。
英語が全然話せなくてカタコトで単語の羅列みたいなレベルで挑んだ私でしたが、ジョディーは私に合わせてゆっくりめの英語で話してくれました。
たくさんおしゃべりしながら楽しくおいしい時間を過ごせました。機会があればまた行きたいです。
I had very happy time with Jodie. I chose the CLASS 1 of her cookery class. We made much meals with sauces. That was much healthy and so delicious!
She taught me them so gently that I'm able to try them again at home!
Though I'm poor at English, I chat with her pleasantly.
In the next time I go to Taiwan, I want to see her and take another chass.
See you again!
Sincerely, Ayako
January 2011
Jodie,
I've been cooking at least twice a week and feel really comfortable trying new things in the kitchen. Your cooking class changed my life!
Hope you had a good new years! Thanks!
David
December 2010
Our cooking lesson with Jodie was a highlight of our trip to Taipei, being given the confidence to make our very own dumplings from scratch has inspired and excited us so much that we can't wait now to get home to cook all sorts of sweet and savory dumplings for our friends and family. To cap off the cooking lesson the hike up and along the Four Beasts mountain was a great way to burn off the delicious dumplings as well as build up a hunger for more delicious Taiwanese food later that evening. What a great day!" - Simon Enderby
December 2010
... It was so much fun! I learned how to make my own soymilk and ways to make it tasty really yummy. I also leaned how to make my own delicious chili oil, sesame paste, sesame paste, a few different Asian dressings, hot and sour soup and a few other dishes. Every time she made one dish she was telling me three or four other ways to the ingredients. It was a one on one class and it was really wonderful talking to Jodie... It was well worth every penny!!
Read more on this guest's blog
November 2010
Hi Jodie,
We had a great time. I love the way you approach food and this course was exactly what I was looking for. Everything made from scratch, so fresh and healthy... I feel like these are the fundamentals - and if I master the knowledge of these ingredients and sauces that I will have a good basis on which to make other healthy and wholesome asian dishes. Luckily, we have a very good source in Shanghai who has most of these quality ingredients at reasonable prices in the city. There is a local Shanghainese lady who owns a wet-market on Wulumuqi lu. Over the years many of the western style restaurants and quality Cantonese and Tawianese restaurants have arranged with her to bring in import ingredients and source locally produced, organic and healthy products as prices far less than the big grocery stores. So we can find many of these basic items and trust the quality.
I'm going to start making these soups and sauces and playing around with recipes and see what I can come up with.
You're quite right in that even though we have been in China a long time, there are still some ingredients and items that it's difficult to imagine cooking with. For example - I know that sesame is a big ingredient in a lot of asian dishes, but I had no idea how versatile and how tasty it is !
November 2010
Jodie,
I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for your assistance. Everything you suggested turned out to be quite nice. The driver in Taroko was very pleasant and knowledgeable. We also really enjoyed hiking around Juifen and Jinguashi. Thanks
As you can see I'm putting my new skills to work.
April 2010
Jodie,
I want to thank you for a wonderful time during my first day in Taipei. You are a warm, patient and caring woman with a lot to share with others. The experience that day was a magnificent introduction to the culture, community and history of Taiwan.
December 2009
HEY JODIE!
I just want to thank you again for all you have done for us! We all enjoyed the cooking class VERY VERY much. My friends and I are raving about the experience and now, we want to try taking another cooking class in Hong Kong. You taught us so much and we will put this experience to good use!
December 2009
Jodie focuses on teaching her students the truest form of traditional cooking: using the core seasonings and ingredients to create the flavors that Chinese food is known for.
To me, flavor is what truly differentiates Chinese food from any other cuisine, and once you know how to mix and match the flavors and seasonings, you can create many dishes. Jodie teaches you how to create these flavors and sauces, which can be used for vegetables, grilled seafood, soups, and more.
Read more on this guest's blog
September 2009
Everything was simple and delicious. Jodie showed us sour-and-spicy soup, how to prepare homemade soy milk (which is delicious!), as well as a sesame paste, spicy Sichuan flower pepper oil, and a simple Taiwanese dressing - all of which are easily added to veggies, noodles or meat.
Jodie does a good job of giving a basic explanation of vital ingredients, and then showing how they can be mixed together to create the various flavors.
August 2009
To learn about a culture, is to learn about their food. Cooking is such a relaxing and enjoyable event for me that it only makes sense to experience local cuisine the way it’s meant to be prepared and consumed. Jodie’s Kitchen was the perfect place to spend a Sunday afternoon. Not only did we escape the insane heat and eat some delicious food, we learned about Taiwan culture and cuisine from a very altruistic Taiwanese woman.
I had such a good time… I’d recommend her cooking class to anyone that enjoys good food and good company. We opted for the one day cooking class, but she has a variety of options to choose from.
(Read more and see their photos on their blog)
May 2009
I had my cooking class in the morning, and it turned out to be great...
It was really fun... We started off talking a little bit, letting her get a sense for how much I knew about cooking or about Chinese food in general, and what sorts of things I was interested in. I had previously emailed that I was especially interested in foods that didn't require wheat flour, and everything we did was designed for rice flour, which will be great.
Our first thing was simply to make soy bean milk, a typical hot beverage to start the day in Asia (more so than cofee for many Asian folks). We then just spent time going through different ingredients, smelling and tasting the ingredients one by one, and then seeing how they tasted when mixed together, and learning which ones were more local Taiwanese, which were Szechuan, which were Shanghainese, and so on. Things like different vinegars, different oils, different peppers, different qualities of soy sauces -- she was already very good at pointing out when you can use basic (i.e., cheaper) ingredients, and when you really needed to invest in the good stuff.
We then moved on to bigger things -- a very simple but extremely good sour and spicy soup (which becomes Szechuan hot and sour soup with just a couple of ingredient additions). As with everything to come, Jodie talked about how flexible this dish was -- add in this, or that, serve it this way or that way, and so on. That was a key point in the class -- almost everything was such that it could be made in a variety of ways, and used on or with a variety of ingredients. It wasn't really a class to learn recipes, so much as a class to learn flavors and how they mix, and how they could be used in different ways.
We then made different types of sesame pastes (again, to be used on a ton of things -- fruit, meat, fish), and had a spicy Szechuan sunflower-pepper oil spicy pineapple dish -- just a spiced and herbed oil on pineapple, that was so simple, so good, and filled with all the flavors you would think of Asian cooking. We also made a sweet and sour dressing on spicy pickled cucumber, and about five other sauces. We finished up with a simple fried rice, and with conversation about why my fried rice (and stir fry) doesn't usually work out quite right. I really learned a lot, and enjoyed getting to know Jodie...
(Read more at this guest's blog)
January 2009
Taiwan Journal #6 - Jodie's Cooking Class
...the class lasted about 4 hours and for the first couple of hours, she taught us about the basic ingredients of Taiwanese cooking. Jodie is a total foodie... she gets really excited about organic, natural ingredients... she talked a 
lot about how when you eat healthier how much better it makes you feel. It's hard to argue with that. She taught us about different kinds of sesame seeds, sesame oils, different kinds of salts and sugars used in Taiwanese cooking, different kinds of vinegars, different styles of soy sauce... it sounds kind of dull but she was so passionate that it made it really interesting.
After that we started cooking... it was a total blast. We made spicy szechuan pineapple, white sesame paste and black sesame paste (both were awesome as a vegetable dip, salad dressing, or on noodles), spicy szechuan cucumbers, chinese green onion pancakes, delicious...
(See more comments, photos and video on their blog)
December 2008
Our team building activity was a cooking class... We learnt the basic ingredients of Taiwanese cooking, some tips on nutrition, then had our hand at kneading the dough for some home-made green onion pancake. We also learnt how to make Taiwanese dishes such as hot and spicy Sze Chuan sauce.
I was amazed at how something as simple as beancurd with vinegar and garlic can taste so amazing! Will make some for my Christmas party tomorrow.
(Read more about their trip on their blog)
October 1 2008
I wanted to thank you again for the wonderful class. I know that everyone had a fabulous time, and I especially appreciated getting to see our friends in a more relaxed environment. And, of course, the food was delicious!
I will certainly keep you in mind for future trips, or to recommend to anyone coming to visit your beautiful country.
September 24 2008
We’ve just returned home with full and happy stomachs thanks to Jodie, our sensei of Asian cuisine. I strongly recommend her personalized cooking class to anyone passing through Taipei! The class lasted about 4 hours, during which we learned several recipes for sauces based on flower pepper and sesame seed, Chinese minestrone soup, and the classic fried rice...
June 29 2008
Jodie,
I wanted to thank you for the wonderful class, quite well matched to my individual interests. Each dish was very unique and tasted superb. As I went back through my notes and recipes, I am astonished at how quick, easy, delicious and healthy the entire menu was. I asked for something to “wow” my friends at dinner parties with, and got just that.
Anyway, it was just a delightful afternoon at your class, and as if the wonderful cuisine was not enough, it was quite an added bonus to discuss interesting topics regarding improving one’s life.
May 2008
Dear Jodie,
Have just arrived home from Taiwan and wanted to pass on my thanks to you for the lovely morning I spent in your company and for the cooking demonstration you gave me. I am going to Newcastle tomorrow morning where they have two Asian shops, and hope I can get the ingredients you showed me. Also my family are all visiting this coming weekend, so I plan to do my own "demonstration" and tasting for them.
...We really loved our time in Taiwan - your travel slogan is "Touch Your Heart", and it certainly touched ours.
Many thanks again,
Dear Jodie,
The dinner for my family was a great success. As I was keen to show them as much as possible of what I had learnt, I served up a buffet style meal with some Thai meat balls I had made, noodles and rice (some plain and some with two of your sauces on them), plus all sorts of other accompaniments - pineapple, eggplant, cucumber, tofu, etc., done with your various sauces. Maybe not what you would recommend, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed having a taste of a wide variety of things.
Thanks again,