Vietnam 5 - Hoi An - Off to Cooking School

We are eager to learn to cook here.  Going out is fun and inexpensive, but it does get old for every meal, every day.  Plus, we enjoy cooking so are heading off to school.  Cooking school that is!

We decided on Kumquat BBQ Restaurant and cooking school.  We signed up for a private lesson, just the two of us.  We were able to select 4 items from a shortened menu of food types.  One each of a salad, a soup, a local specialty and a main course.  If one was to join in a group class there are the same number of food items to be made and the menu changes daily. 

Our goals were these:

-          Understand which of the many greens found in the market were which (and which should be eaten cooked, and which raw)

-          Learn to make salad dressing (Vietnamese style)

-          Learn to make a BBQ sauce which we could use when cooking a protein

-          Learn to make a local dish, and the dipping sauce that accompanies it

Sweet and Sour Fish Soup

We arrived a bit early and used the time to meander through the fields again.  Then off to the school for a drink of Kumquat juice.   Making this seems dead easy (squeeze a few kumquats into a glass with sugar or sugar syrup, some water and ice and you are good to go)  I think.  Might try it some day assuming it is easy to get kumquats.  They seem to be growing all over the place so I assume they sell them in the market.

Kumquat plant

Our first activity was a short walk in the garden to learn to identify the greens.  Glad we did this because one of our favourite greens in restaurants is morning glory vine cooked with garlic.  We planned to try that one at home and luckily before we got too far we learned that what we thought was raw morning glory was not!  Good save – now we know what to look for.

This is what morning glory looks like, as it turns out

Next was the salad dressing lesson.  The instructor walked us through the recipe, and we learned about cooking garlic and shallots ahead in oil, and then this infused oil is used by the spoonful in making the actual dressing.  Good tip.

And using the cooking length chopsticks

We also learned about their BBQ sauce, which we now know requires a blender, which of course we do not have.  It also requires different cooking methods than we have at the house (a BBQ or grill or oven) so this one will be recorded and saved for Canada.

The BBQ chicken

I also took photos of the packaged and bottled ingredients so we can find these later.

Our chosen salad was one we were enjoying in restaurants called a green papaya salad.  Green papaya is apparently a different item than just unripe orange papaya, and to get it in salad shape requires making julienne strings using a specific tool (that we now own).  Carrots are also cut to the same shape.  OK, one down.

Deadly sharp, watch the knuckles

We chose to do a sweet and sour fish soup and were surprised to discover that a powdered chicken broth was one of the base ingredients.  Beyond the fish there was a tremendous variety of vegetables, and a bit of raw pineapple.  Since we are trying to only buy as much fresh stuff as we can use in a day this seemed a bit complicated until we learned that the markets sell these soup mixtures premixed and cut – well that would be easy.

Premixed veggies for soup

Finally, our local dish of choice was a rice pancake.  This uses a rice flour and turmeric blend that is sold specifically for this.  Ultimately the pancake is made, then bean sprouts and a herb salad type mixture is added and the whole thing is rolled inside a rice paper and dipped into another sauce.

This is a rice flour and tumeric blend used for the rice pancakes

All in all a really enjoyable day, and we are busy planning our next market trip.