Cooking Class

Last week I got everyone together and signed us up for a cooking class.  I love all of the food here and I’ve been trying lots of new things so I thought it would be nice to see how things are actually made.  I took a pasta making workshop in Italy last summer and it was one of my favorite activities that we did.  We made a three course meal and then we were served dessert!

First course: Mustard leaf rolls with crunchy vegetables & prawns.

First we made the fish sauce that we eat with almost everything here.  We split that in two and marinated our vegetables with half of it.  The cooking center prepared boiled prawn (fresh water shrimp) for us that we just had to peel and cut open.  We rolled the vegetables inside the mustard leaf with rice noodles and then tied the prawn on the outside.  We had to cut the leaf that we used to tie the roll together.  I always joke about how I failed cutting in kindergarten but it seems that I am still failing cutting at 21.  I could not use the kitchen scissors provided at all.  At first I was like okay Michelle it’s because they are meant for rightys just make the few snips with your right hand- but I still couldn’t do it.  I sat there contemplating for a few minutes- should I just leave it or should I embarrass myself and ask for help?  I ended up asking for help and the chef gave me her scissors, which were a little easier to use and I was able to cut my roll to perfection!

Second Course: Sticky rice fritter stuffed with pork.

For this course we took beans and mixed them with cooked sticky rice.  I always thought that sticky rice was different because of the way it was cooked but it is a different type of rice and its cooked the same as regular rice.  We then chopped up some carrots and added them to the minced pork and cooked that.  We stuffed the sticky rice with the pork/carrot mixture and then boiled them in peanut oil.  These were really good and very different from anything I have tried while here.

H to the C-M?

Third Course: Fresh rice noodles with marinated BBQ pork.

This is one of my favorite dishes in Vietnam and I am glad I was able to make it for myself.  First we chopped up garlic and onions and added it to the pork.  Then we made another batch of fresh fish sauce and added half to the pork for marinade the other half was poured over the dish when it was complete.  We prepared the fresh rice noodles by chopping up lettuce and fresh herbs.  Then we grilled the pork over individual charcoal grills and we used a fan to increase the temperature.  We weren’t very good at grilling and the pieces of pork in the middle were pretty crispy (my favorite pieces).

I enjoyed a glass or two of Cabernet Sauvignon as we were cooking and eating. Dessert was a passion fruit pudding, it was very tart but I liked it a lot.  Another successful cooking class!  I have recipes and directions for how to cook everything we made so when I get home maybe I will try and cook a Vietnamese meal- if I can find the ingredients that is!