Vietnam Cooking up a Dish

Recently I went to cookery school in Vietnam. This wasn’t just about how to prepare new dishes – though there was lots of that- it also included having to “pass” many “name the fruit” quizzes. Peng and foreign fruitThis seemed to be a popular pastime amongst guides, partly because Vietnam has an astonishingly large variety of fruits and partly because, I suspect, tourists are as hopeless at remembering names and indeed tastes. Well now I know what the outside of a dragonfruit looks like (I even saw one growing) and I have learned what colour the inside a of a jackfruit is – and how nice it tastes. Our first school chef was “from the North” and rather scary although she did manage to keep her temper when one of the other 2 class members mixed her marinade and dipping sauces all in one bowl. Our recipes included: Lotus stem salad, sour fish soup, caramel fish and steamed rice and (for dessert) sweet green bean soup which tasted rather like semolina

I had a full day trip to the Mekong Delta. During this, we took two different boats on a very silty river, enjoyed our first freshly and hand-made spring rolls but refused to sample both snake and scorpion wine. This is the Vietnamese version of saki, or rice wine, into which is immersed a whole snake – honestly! – or a rather frighteningly large number of scorpions. The guide assured us all it was “very good for men” but – just sometimes- I am asexual so I still refused. At one stop we walked around a coconut candy “factory” – all in the open air. At another, we were guided around an orchard farm (more fruit naming) and then enjoyed the fruits of their labours enlivened by a musical entertainment

In Hoi An, I visited a local market and enjoyed the second and most entertaining cookery class in an up-river restaurant facility owned by an Ozzie and where the hosting chef had excellent English skills. He was able to joke and deliver fast one-liners as well as getting up close and cuddly with me during the demo. We learnt to create seafood salad in half pineapple, Vietnamese eggplant, fresh rice paper rolls, Hoi An pancakes, steamed fish on fresh vegetables and, this was best, how to decorate food! On the trip to this cooking class, which was again by river, we saw very many of the open fish nets typical of this region. The clever characteristic of these is that just before they are lowered into the water a light is lit above them and in their centre. This used to be tallow or oil but is of course now electrical. The cleverness of the design comes as insects are attracted to the light that is lit at night. Many of these bugs blunder into the water surface thereby supplying free bait to the fishermen who simply have to come along the next morning and gently lift their net on its four sticks a little above the water surface so that they can “catch” their fish.

Best for entertainment value was the scarifying cyclo trip that everyone had to take from market to cooking class in Hanoi! This time the food market despite being very fresh raised a few ughs for the seaweed jelly (which I foolishly sampled) to our last cooking class. This was boiling hot and therefore an occasion on which I would have preferred not to have had to wear chef’s hats they gave us but it was too complicated to resist. The guide to this school (Anh pronounced ‘Ann’) taught us a great Vietnamese-ism – “to enjoy”. After each dish was created (recipes were Imperial spring rolls, shrimps sautéed with cashew nuts, sour fish broth) she asked very firmly “do you want to enjoy them now or enjoy them later?”