Day 34 - Cooking a Vietnamese Meal

Today we had a welcome change in activity which was a cooking class with a celebrated local Vietnamese Master Chef, Chef Mai. We started the day meeting her at the local market to shop for ingredients we would use in our class. The market was stocked with usual colorful array of fruits, vegetables and meats. Mai guided us around, chatting with her local market favorite vendors while informing us of many items we were unfamiliar with including fruits, vegetables and many herbs. She shared how many of the herbs were still used in Vietnam for medicinal purposes (headaches, fertility, boosting immunity etc.).

Thankfully the bowls of live eels available were not on the menu and not needed!

However, what was on the menu for the day was pork spring rolls, banana flower salad, Bun Cha (grilled pork patties, vermicelli, lettuce and herbs in a sweet and sour chili sauce). By the way, this is a very abbreviated ingredients list. Chef Mai showed us how to chop, make and wrap the spring rolls and create the pork patties. We also helped to make the special chili sauce used for the spring rolls and the Bun Cha. It was really fun to see how this creative and delicious food is made. We realized how much time and care goes into the preparation. For example, one of the many ingredients, ear mushrooms, are boiled for hours in a vinegar broth just to soften them up. It puts my frozen chicken pot pies to shame!

Here is Master Chef Mai using some exceptional chopping skills:

Here is Master Chef Steve cooking up some spring rolls:

In photos#2 and #3 below you can see us devouring the feast that we had prepared with our guide, Phong and Chef Mai. It was Soooo good!

So that's a wrap on Hanoi! On to our next adventure tomorrow. Tune in to see where we go next:)

Fun Fact: It's been challenging keeping track of the math for currency conversion as we flip from country to country and still find amusing the crazy large numbers. The Vietnamese Dong is 25,000 for $1 and we've withdrawn literally millions (in 500,000 bills) from ATMs.