September 21 - Day 2, part 1: Ho Chi Minh City - cooking lessons

Our first full day in HCMC, we set off bright & early for a guided tour of the main market, Ben Thanh, learning about the local food and how it's cooked. The market is huge and busy, but very clean and orderly. The fruit & veg looked fabulous and so fresh.

The seafood was being prepped while we wandered around and much of it was still alive. The kids found it a bit confronting to see the fish being killed & gutted while we watched, but that was nothing compared to seeing how live frogs are butchered...heads chopped off with scissors. Quite brutal to watch but probably a fairly quick end for the frog. The kids were not sure how to react to a headless frog escaping the bucket and heading off down the path - funny yet really disturbing! Then we were treated to a demonstration of 'de-gloving' the skin. I think Dan was giving serious thought to becoming a vegetarian.

Live frogs awaiting their fate

A quick snip

Headless & skinless and still moving

After the tour of the market we headed off with our chef guide to learn how to make some traditional Vietnamese dishes. We started the session learning about the kitchen gods, a tragic story about a wife with two husbands who all died when they followed each other into a fire, driven by love & grief. Hence the 3 point fire stand used in traditional cooking.

Then it was upstairs for the cooking lesson. We learned how to cut & present pineapple boats, fancy cut carrots, make salad salad, spring rolls & caramelised pork. The chef was a great teacher, very funny, and there were a few helpers to keep an eye on fingers and help with tricky bits.

There was even a rice mold to add a finishing touch to serving the meal. At the end we all sat down to eat our feast together. This was a very handS on class and we had a lot of fun. We all "passed" and received a recipe book, chop sticks and certificate as momentos of the morning. I can certainly recommend it to anyone heading over to HCMC.

Part 2 of the day to come soon along with the top 5 from the rest of the family (they are down at the beach).

Posted with Blogsy