Culinary Wanderlust: Hanoi Cooking Centre Part 1

One of the great things about living in Vietnam is the food. Right outside my door there's a market every morning from roughly 6am to 11am, which is where I buy pretty much all of my fruit, veggies, eggs, and various other odds and ends that I need in my kitchen. Of course, there are regularly things I see there that I can't identify and would have no idea how to use, but that the locals seem to buy all the time! Many times I have wished for someone to walk through the market with me, answering all of my questions.

Since we got here, my friend Christine and I have talked of doing a cooking class. FINALLY, nearly a year and a half later, we got around to actually doing it! (Yeah, we're on top of things....) The class included a tour of the nearby market, which seemed to have even more of the weird and wonderful than my local market does. So I present to you now a collection of photos taken at the Chau Long market, Hanoi.

Warning: if you are sensitive about seeing random animal parts, you might want to skip the first several pictures!

Some of the meat sellers.

Brains. Pig, I think.

They do use every part of the animal.

It's very important to get your intestines positioned JUST right!

Seafood mania!

Before....

and after.

A lovely selection of chicken innards, including hearts, livers, kidneys, intestines, and partly formed eggs! (the orange one on the right) In the back left are some silkworm larvae.

We discovered that when Huyen asked "Do you want to try it?", if we said yes, she'd buy some of whatever we were looking at. That was pretty cool, because I tried things I wouldn't normally have eaten! More on that in part 2...