Green Bamboo Cooking School - Hoi An

You may remember waaaaaaay back just after Christmas I went to Hoi An for a little holiday and while I was there I did the Taste of Hoi An street food tour. At the end of Part 2 I hinted at a cooking course, and now you finally get to hear about it!

The "Teacher" on the street food tour, Neville, recommended Green Bamboo Cooking School, and it had been recommended by other friends, so that was the obvious choice. I was just lucky enough to get the last spot on the day I went!

As with most cooking classes, it started with a market tour and then moved on to the kitchen, and rather than tell you I'm going to make this more of a photo essay and just show you!

All kinds of delicious dishes on offer inside the market.

Spices and sticky rice cakes.

It's a lot of work to shred coconut!

More spices and other goodies.

Pre-herbed fish. Ready to cook!

The fish market is always busy!

We then went to our kitchen, which just happened to be right in our instructor's beautiful house!

We got to choose our dishes from a fairly extensive list, and someone had already chosen my favourite Bánh xèo , so I picked the stuffed squid in tomato sauce.

I got to do everything from scratch, including cleaning out these huge squid, which was a new one for me!

We spent ages chopping, dicing, slicing and grating, and then when everything was ready we made each dish one by one, snacking on the first couple while we made the rest.

Wrapping spring rolls.

Making bánh xèo.

Yum! So crispy!

The squid was stuffed with a mixture of pork, onion, carrot, woodear mushroom, and various other spices and condiments.

Banana flower salad with beef and prawns. Another one of my favourites!

Fish in a clay pot. Delicious.

Van making a huge pot of broth for our phở.

Mmmm phở bò (beef noodle soup).

My finished squid. Yum!

That's it! We finished off the day of cooking with a huge feast of all the things we made, and Van gave each of us a pair of cooking chopsticks (extra long ones) and a recipe book so I can make any of these any time! Yum!



"Taste of Hoi An" Street Food Tour Part 2

 In my last post I started telling you all about the "Taste of Hoi An" street food tour I did just after Christmas. If you haven't been to Hoi An, well, you should. Despite being ridiculously touristy, it has somehow retained an immense amount of charm and with its traditional shophouses lining the river, and its location near the beach, it's a great place to relax for a few days!

  

On with the tour! After we spent some time in a cafe sampling some of the street food, Neville told us we were about 30% through the tastings for that day. I panicked a bit at that point, because I was already starting to feel full! Thankfully, we had a bit of a break and some walking to do.

 

We found this mobile chè seller along our walk. She had several types, with red beans, jellies, and coconut, served hot or cold. So many choices!

 

 

Hoi An has a pretty major history as a trading port and at various times had communities of Chinese, Indian, Dutch, and Japanese, among others. Visitors from all over the world left their legacies in Hoi An, and one of the main sights is still the Japanese covered bridge.

 

 

 The Japanese may also have left a food legacy. Historians and foodies have speculated that cao lầu noodles are possibly somehow derived from or made to imitate Japanese soba noodles. They are thick and chewy and made with rice, lye, and the town's special well water, and thus are completely unique to Hoi An!

 

Walking down a lane, we found these cao lầu noodles drying.

 

 

These noodles are cooked and served with five-spice pork, lettuce, herbs such as mint, basil, and cilantro (coriander), bean sprouts, a bit of broth, and topped with crunchy croutons. Of course there are always chili sauce, vinegar, and lime available to make it taste just how you like it! It's delicious, cheap, and everywhere!  

 

We strolled down this cute little lane, which is quite typical of Hoi An's back alleys.

 

 

At one point we stopped down a lane at a vegetarian restaurant, the kind that makes "meat" out of soy products, and we tried soy "beef" and "pork belly". It was ok but I still prefer the real thing!

 

And we found this guy!

 

Then it was time to retreat to the tasting room, where we were presented with numerous more dishes to try. The first was this bánh cuốn, thin rice noodle wrapped around pork and wood-ear mushroom. Again, I devoured this while all of the others found the texture and flavours very strange!

 

Next, we had two different types of sticky rice, one savoury with pork and herbs, and another sweeter with peanut, black bean, and sesame.

 

Then it was on to chả giò (spring rolls made with lattice paper, filled with pork, carrot, and mushroom)....

  

....green mango with sweet spicy dressing,...

 

 

...chả lá lốt (minced pork mixed with herbs and wrapped in a betel leaf - one of my favourites!)...

 

...and bánh bèo (steamed rice-flour discs with dried shrimp filling).

 

Near the end of the meal, we had a few beverages, including chanh muối, (salty lemonade), and because Neville realized that this would be a great mixer for margaritas, he whipped out this tiny bottle of tequila and we all added some to our lemony drink. 

 

I can't believe this is all the pictures I have! There were so many more things we tried, I feel like I must have lost some pictures along the way somewhere, but maybe I just never took them.

 

We also had chuối chiên (deep fried banana fritter), mi ga (chicken noodle soup), mứt dừa (candied coconut strips), tương ớt (Hoi An special chili sauce), nếp (fortified rice wine), bánh chưng (sticky rice cake in banana leaf and a Tết holiday specialty), a Vietnamese version of Spam, and cà phê sữa đá (iced Vietnamese coffee). I've probably forgotten something, but you get the idea.

 

If you're ever in Hoi An, I highly recommend this tour. Neville has lived there for many years, and he's quite a foodie so he knows a lot about it as well as the local area, and he talks just about non-stop for the whole 5 hours! He's also great for recommendations on tailors, spas, and cooking classes (can you see a future post in this?) So do this! It's great if you love food!

 



"Taste of Hoi An" Street Food Tour

"You live in Hanoi? Then why do you need to do this tour?", one of my fellow food-tasters asked me. Stunned, I stared at him. For a minute or so my mouth gaped open, it opening and closing with no words coming out, me wanting to say something, but really having no idea how to respond to that. I like to eat and I like to discover new things, and in a country FULL of tasty treats and regional variations, how could he even think that living in Hanoi meant I had nothing left to discover?

I've recently hit my two-and-a-half year mark of living in Vietnam, and yes, I might know more about Vietnamese food than most people who don't live here, but I wouldn't say my knowledge is all that extensive. I don't even know all about all the Hanoi specialities, never mind delicious goodies from other parts of Vietnam!

Thus, when I booked a trip to Hoi An for just after Christmas and people started suggesting the Taste of Hoi An Street Food Tour, how could I resist?

The tour started early, with a 7:30am pick-up from my hotel. Luckily, the first stop was a small cafe for sinh tố, a fruit shake. These come in all varieties, but the one we had was mixed chunks of fruit (rather than blended) with ice and coconut milk. The perfect breakfast!

Next was the market tour.

I didn't take many pictures in the market, as I've taken so many before and while pictures of vegetables are colourful, they get a bit old after a while! One thing I did think picture-worthy was this:

Now, I'm no expert and no one said anything or made a big deal out of it, but that looks a lot like a shark to me! And I feel like that's something you don't see too often in the markets here! (Ok, Hanoi's not on the coast...)

I also liked this large billboard advocating the use of re-useable shopping bags rather than zillions of plastic ones! Yes!

We stopped to chat to this gorgeous old woman selling root vegetables. She's in her 90s and a long time ago painted her teeth black, as was the custom in her village. Isn't she stunning?

We were also joined on our market tour by Jim, a veteran of the American War who just likes to come hang out with Neville and his group of tourists. Jim doesn't really speak any English but he figured out that I could speak a bit of Vietnamese, and from then on he took it upon himself to tell me the Vietnamese name of EVERYTHING we looked at. Of course I don't remember any of it!

Just outside of the market we found this woman who sells xí mà, which in my menu of things we tried is described in English as "Sweet Water-Grass & Black Sesame Seed Elixir" - it's kind of a slightly sweet pudding made of various things that are supposed to be ridiculously good for you. It reminded me a lot of black sesame chè we made in our Hanoi Cooking Centre class, but less sweet and thick. This was one time when my Hanoian-ness showed itself: while everyone else was exclaiming how strange the texture and flavour was, I was gobbling it up pretty quickly because it all seemed quite normal to me!

Despite that, Jim decided that I wasn't eating my xí mà fast enough and that he had to spoon-feed me!

Jim left us shortly after this, and it wasn't until he was about to go that I looked down and realized that half of his right leg was made of metal.

It was a time of the lunar month when the locals don't eat much meat, so there was a lot of tofu and fish for sale, with various sauces and pickled veggies to accompany it. 

The tour leader, or "Teacher", Neville, has obviously made many friends along his route!

We then stopped at a cafe for a sit-down and a chance to try a few Hoi An specialities.

First, the ubiquitous bánh mì...

...and some samples of cao lầu and mì quảng, two Hoi An noodle specialties, as well as cà tím (eggplant roasted with shallots and oil) and rau muống xào tỏi (stir-fried morning glory with garlic), the last of which is a dish I've had more times than I could possibly count!

The eggplant up close.

And then some samples of gỏi cuốn (fresh spring rolls), bánh xèo (Vietnamese pancake filled with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts), bánh bao (White rose, a small shrimp dumpling that is famous in Hoi An), and hoành thánh chiên (Fried wontons with pork, shrimp, and salsa).   

  

This is getting long and I've got lots more to show you, so I'll just leave you with that teaser! Come back in a couple of days to see more of my Taste of Hoi An Street Food Tour!