We're up early next day to attend our Advanced class at Miss Vy's Morning Glory Cooking School ($35 each.) There are ony 4 of us, Ted has volunteered to learn to cook (yeah), Ricardo is a chef from Italy and Janine is a German foodie.Our teacher Lu speaks good English but we have a prep sous chef with little English to help us.
We walk to the end the road, get in the ferry boat, an arrive at the morning produce market in 5 minutes. Lu guides us through the fish, meat, produce, fruit market, and there's food stalls at the end where people are perched on stools eating breakfast of all the lovely fresh things. The fish is super fresh, shiny eyes. The meat is something else, every little bit gets eaten somehow.
There are other groups here too, but we split up at the market so not a big group. We each carry our shopping basket, we have a coolie hat (good for sun or rain sprinkles) but I've stuck with my big NineWest sun shade which I've been living in. I can take photos easily with it on. Sun here is very bright, midday especially difficult for photos.
We each get catfish, tons of fresh herbs, a pomelo. The rest of the ingredients are already there, they bought the clams at 4am this morning to soak them before we start cooking!
The cooking school is upstairs. Downstairs is Miss Vy's Market Restaurant, set out with cooking stations and a huge array of beautiful foods. Lu tours us arouond, lets us try our hand at making rice paper, noodles (I fail that one!), eating odd things (duck embryo anyone? silk worms, jelly fish. Beautiful little moutfuls of wondrous flavours abound. We are spellbound watching the very adept chefs turn them out. When Ricardo tries the tiny multi-strand noodle machine, it's like watching Charlie Chaplin on Modern Times...
Absolutely everything is prepared from scratch! And it was either walking, swimming or growing yesterday.
Then it's our turn. We prepare herbs, chop, cook, chop, skin/bone fish. It's great that I don't have to say "no chili for me" I just don't put them in. Ted makes the mistake when Lu says that green pepper is not hot, he bashes it with his mortar, throws it in his soup, and can't eat it afterwards! Our assistant is there to clean up, provide new clean implements, ingredients, I am liking this...but I would like a heavier knife...
We cook fat juicy clam soup, BBQ fish with noodles, Shrimp/chicken/pomelo salad and (watch Lu prepare) frozen condensed milk yoghurt and fresh fruits with peanuts and coconut on top. It's enough for a family of 4 but we are expected to eat our own creations! We fail that test. But washed down with the local beer, it's all extremely good.
There's a handsome cookbook from Miss Vy but not the weight to acquire. We do get our recipes to take home (not a nice book ike at Luang Prabang) and a typical Vietnames cooking implement that will certainly need to be checked! It's an oval flat tool with a super-sharp blade for slicing shallots, onions, lemon grass very finely - also fingers I suspect!
At 2pm we are pretty tired and head home for the afternoon rest.
We walk to the end the road, get in the ferry boat, an arrive at the morning produce market in 5 minutes. Lu guides us through the fish, meat, produce, fruit market, and there's food stalls at the end where people are perched on stools eating breakfast of all the lovely fresh things. The fish is super fresh, shiny eyes. The meat is something else, every little bit gets eaten somehow.
There are other groups here too, but we split up at the market so not a big group. We each carry our shopping basket, we have a coolie hat (good for sun or rain sprinkles) but I've stuck with my big NineWest sun shade which I've been living in. I can take photos easily with it on. Sun here is very bright, midday especially difficult for photos.
We each get catfish, tons of fresh herbs, a pomelo. The rest of the ingredients are already there, they bought the clams at 4am this morning to soak them before we start cooking!
The cooking school is upstairs. Downstairs is Miss Vy's Market Restaurant, set out with cooking stations and a huge array of beautiful foods. Lu tours us arouond, lets us try our hand at making rice paper, noodles (I fail that one!), eating odd things (duck embryo anyone? silk worms, jelly fish. Beautiful little moutfuls of wondrous flavours abound. We are spellbound watching the very adept chefs turn them out. When Ricardo tries the tiny multi-strand noodle machine, it's like watching Charlie Chaplin on Modern Times...
Absolutely everything is prepared from scratch! And it was either walking, swimming or growing yesterday.
Then it's our turn. We prepare herbs, chop, cook, chop, skin/bone fish. It's great that I don't have to say "no chili for me" I just don't put them in. Ted makes the mistake when Lu says that green pepper is not hot, he bashes it with his mortar, throws it in his soup, and can't eat it afterwards! Our assistant is there to clean up, provide new clean implements, ingredients, I am liking this...but I would like a heavier knife...
We cook fat juicy clam soup, BBQ fish with noodles, Shrimp/chicken/pomelo salad and (watch Lu prepare) frozen condensed milk yoghurt and fresh fruits with peanuts and coconut on top. It's enough for a family of 4 but we are expected to eat our own creations! We fail that test. But washed down with the local beer, it's all extremely good.
There's a handsome cookbook from Miss Vy but not the weight to acquire. We do get our recipes to take home (not a nice book ike at Luang Prabang) and a typical Vietnames cooking implement that will certainly need to be checked! It's an oval flat tool with a super-sharp blade for slicing shallots, onions, lemon grass very finely - also fingers I suspect!
At 2pm we are pretty tired and head home for the afternoon rest.
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