Vietnamese Cooking School

Red Bridge Cooking School

We are part of a large crowd in a noisy wet market in Hoi An, Vietnam looking at rows and rows of food vendors with screaming meat — the epitome of fresh food. We watch as a an old, old man, with no dental plan, and his young woman offsider prep their frogs for sale. Skins are peeled off like stickers and the nude frogs are plopped, unceremoniously, into a red bucket.

A trip to Vietnam is not complete without a cooking class and on a bright sunny day shrouded by a haze of smog, we are part of this crowd and a smaller crowwith a young vietnamese girl who will take us along the Thu Bon river to the Red Bridge Cooking School. With very few bridges the river is a highway and also, unfortunately, a rubbish dump.

A major cleanup by local businesses and government in 2005 saw 32 tonnes of waste collected from the river. But, the battle to stop the dumping still continues.

Before we set off we will buy the ingredients for our lunch and this is the reason for our visit to the markets. Our guide who is familiar with the markets points out stalls of interest but she is steely in her mission. We are looking for a fresh duck, which is not on our menu. I can only assume it is on someones and some fresh herbs.

We approach a seated woman surrounded by headless duck bodies and our guide begins to examine the ducks and barter with the woman. Another woman next to us is also selling ducks. Duck that look like they’ve been inflated by a bike pump. I wonder why we bypass her ducks. She keeps smiling as she waves me over to see her ducks. Our guide tells the woman to shut up. Well I don’t really know what she says because she speaks to her in Vietnamese. But she seems chastised. Our guide assures us that we are getting the best product here at this stall and the duck is wrapped and we set off for our boat.

We are travelling down the river on a long wooden boat that couldn’t possibly be any younger than 40 or 50 years, and neither is the captain, who spends the next thirty minutes trying to convince my Bob to go on a deep sea fishing trip with him.

Looking past the rubbish to the banks of the river its a slow relaxing meander, life is simple, and we are greeted warmly upon our arrival. It is a short walk to the cooking school and along dusty lanes we see rows of coconut palms.

Once at the school we are given a tour around the herb garden, which gives credence to the adage of growing herbs in well drained soil. This is pure sand. Some of the herbs are familiar like Vietnamese mint, others are only known by their Vietnamese names.

After the tour we are taken to the cooking arena and take our positions at our cooking tables. We have a small hotplate and bench area where we can prepare and cut our ingredients.

The menu is extensive and consists of a seafood salad, fresh rice paper rolls, which we will make from scratch, pancakes made from rice flour, and an Vietnamese eggplant in clay pot We will also learn how to carve vegetables with a blunt knife.

Hot pots are a favourite Vietnamese dish and a good way to use surplus vegetables. Clay pots are used.

After an enjoyable couple of hours cooking, we make our way back to our tables. Here we get to taste the results of our hard work, and a glass of wine. Cooking school classes are always enjoyable no matter what the language.

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