Cooking at the Hanoi Cooking Centre

Up early and away by 8.20am today! Well, not that early ;) the Hanoi Cooking Centre and Cafe is located just a few km south of here, a 15 min taxi ride. I was welcomed with a cup of iced tea. At 9.0am the three of us on the course were introduced to Tracey Lister a chef from Melbourne who has been in Vietnam for a number of years. I have since learned from her cook book that she is probably responsible for turning this training ground for chefs into a going concern. 

 She took us to the Chau Long  wet  market, just up the street from the centre and told us about the meat, fish, herbs, etc. it was fascinating and I learned a lot! We bought some silk worm cocoons to try later......

      

These eggs were interesting, hen, duck, road runners and the ones in the net bag are fertilised eggs, the net is drawn round them at night in case any hatch!!!!!....... they don't want to lose any ducklings ;)

Apparently these eggs are hard boiled and added to various dishes, very much a local delicacy!

The range of produce from the water is huge, from seafood as you would expect to the frogs, snails, eels and fresh water crabs from the rice paddies. Some of the snails were enormous !

We looked at the turmeric root, and a huge variety of herbs. There was one stand which specialised in herbs for hair washing. Apparently the lady will put a mix together for any sort of allergy or hair condition, then you go home, boil it up to make a 'tea' and wash your hair.

Then it was time to return to the centre and start cooking. The first dish we prepared was caramel pork which then went into small clay pots to cook in the oven for 30 mins.  

We then went on to prepare fish spring rolls using a mixture if prawns, squid and a white fish, along with some fried shallot and a few other ingredients ( I'm not going to tell you everything ;) ), we egged and breadcrumbed them and put them to one side to fry later.

Our tutor ( sorry I can't remember her name ) then cooked the silk worm cocoons just adding a little chilli and some chopped lime leaf and maybe a dash of soy sauce. These are eaten with a beer, so beers were brought in and we sampled the fare with our chopsticks. They were good !!!

Our last dish was a banana flower salad, which contained bean sprouts, coriander, chilli, peanut, cooked pork, a couple of prawns, and dressing made using sugar, water, fish sauce etc. You can vary the fruit and/or vegetable and herbs according to taste and season. 

The last dish which we helped to prepare was a dessert made using black sesame seeds which had to be ground using a pestle and mortar. It was then mixed into boiling water and coconut cream. I think this dessert is an acquired taste, maybe because it does not look terribly appetising.

These are the dishes I prepared 

The dessert

The morning finished with us all sitting upstairs in the restaurant being served the food we had prepared with all drinks included in the fee for the course. In addition we took away our aprons and the cooking notes. 

Chef at work!!!

This experience was definitely worth the money, I have calculated that it cost about £35.

The  temperatures were very hot again today 35c again and humid! I walked to Orlo's school at 3.0pm to help collect his bicycle which had been left there on Wednesday morning, however he did not want to ride it, so it went in the back of a taxi and I brought it home that way.....much better than dripping all the way back !! The fare was about 65p!!!

We have various plans for the weekend, including Orlo planting some seeds and the water puppet theatre on Sunday morning. My flight leaves about midnight on Sunday, so, essentially I have a whole weekend here.

I am not sure when I will complete this blog, but I will try to put something about the water puppet theatre on it before I close down......