December 28th,  Hue (Hway)  Cooking Class

This morning I'd signed up for a local cooking class, put on by a restaurant down in the backpacker ghetto area. A young man arrived at my hotel on his motorbike to take me to the class. It was a sad looking scooter, but I'm game, so I hopped on and off we went, in the wrong direction. He figured it out after a few minutes and continued in the right direction. As we were slowly cruising down one street, another motorbike driver was pulling out into traffic on our right side. My driver T-boned the other guy's scooter, which went down. Ours stayed mostly upright, we got off, shook ourselves out, looked for damage and then continued on. All in the life of a scooter rider.
I'm smiling in this photo, before I knew the skill level of this guy.
At the restaurant I was given a little booklet with the recipes we were going to make and a place to make notes. I looked them over and then hopped on a different scooter, with the female chef, over the Perfume River to the big Dong Ba marketplace. We walked amongst the vendors, stopping at the ones she knew to get the best ingredients.
Here's the pork lady, a little blurry.

The best shrimp.

Cooked rice noodles.

Sliced banana flower, sprouts, lettuces.

A few fresh mushrooms.

Beef with bones department. That's different than beef without bones department.

Scootering back across the Trang Tien bridge.

Vegetable oil, fish sauce, water.

Pepper, chili, sugar, chicken powder.

Rice paper.

Lemon grass, green onions, carrots, cabbage.

Garlic, chili, sprouts.

Peanut butter, toasted sesame seeds, toasted peanuts.


Finished products. Fresh and fried spring rolls.

Hue beef noodle soup.

I didn't get a picture of one of Hue's most famous dishes, Banh Khoai, which is a fried pancake stuffed with pork, shrimp, carrots and sprouts. Too busy cooking and eating!
It's pretty hard to see, but some people go to Dong Ba market by boat across the Perfume River and walk up the shore to the marketplace.

It was a fun experience and I can hardly wait to hit the Asia market to get the ingredients and try these recipes at home.