Cooking School in Hoi An

A few days ago we went to a cooking class. It started with a drink at the cafe that operates the class. I drank a bottle of water because my stomach wasn't feeling all that well (but it felt much better later). Then we got a tour of the local market. On the tour Mom bought a new vegetable peeler. The point of the market tour was to learn what we were cooking and what various vegetables, herbs, meat and fish are used for. There was flying fish for sale. There was corn silk for sale. The guide said it's used to make soup for weddings, because it symbolizes the tying together of the couple.

After the market tour, we got on a boat going to the cooking school. Once at the school we got a brief intro and then the head chef demonstrated how to make seafood salad in a pineapple boat. The head chef was very funny, occasionally using lines like "You must treat it gently, like a lover. Me, I'm single, but I watch movies."

After the seafood salad, the chef demonstrated how to make fresh rice paper and then roll it into spring rolls. You make a rice batter by soaking a cup of white rice in two cups of water for seven hours, and then draining the water off and and adding fresh water. Then you put it in the blender for 5 to 7 minutes, until it is really smooth. To cook it, you pour the batter onto a cheesecloth stretched over a pot of boiling water and steam it for about 1 minute. To remove it you use a skewer of some form and then you put it on a plate and add your filling. The filling normally consists of some sort of meat and vegetables. Then you roll it up, and cut it into pieces, and eat.

Next, he demonstrated how to make Vietnamese pancakes. The pancake batter is the same as the rice paper batter, just with a pinch of tumeric added, and whatever meat you want. You stir it up, and pour it into a pan with oil in it, then shift the pan around until it looks somewhat cooked. Then you sprinkle chopped up spring onion and bean sprouts on top. Then you keep frying it until the bean sprouts and spring onions have sunk in a bit and are cooked in. And then you flip it over to cook it on the other side. Then you flip it a few more times, and then pour off the oil and slide it onto a plate. You take it and put it on a napkin and press the napkin on it so it removes some of the oil. Then put a piece of dry rice paper on the plate, put the pancake on that with some lettuce and herbs on top of it, then roll it up and eat.

Each time the chef showed us how to do something, we then went over to our cooking stations and tried them ourselves. We then got to eat what we made.

The last thing we learned how to cook was eggplant in clay pot. Surprisingly enough, I ate most of my eggplant, probably because it was cooked by me and I knew exactly what went into it. I tweaked the recipe a little by not putting so much chili into it or tomato.

Then we learned some food decoration, including how to make roses out of tomato peels and Vietnamese hand fans out of cucumber. My rose looked like a tulip, and my cucumber failed, but it was still fun.