Staff Class Cooking Day Part 2 - Vietnamese Food

 In my previous post - Staff Class Cooking Day Part 1 - I wrote about the day I had my class of Vietnamese ladies over for a day of cooking fun! On that post I wrote about the Western food we made that day. This one is about the Vietnamese food!

The first Vietnamese dish we made was đậu sốt cà chua (fried tofu with tomato and onion). We began by frying the chunks of tofu in a lot of oil until they were brown and crispy on the outside.

Then, we put the tofu aside, added the tomato and onion to the oil with some fish sauce and seasoning and cooked it until it was soft. We added the tofu again and mixed it all together. Delicious!

The second dish was Chả lá lốt (minced pork in betel leaves). Van Comm started by mixing minced pork with chopped up lốt leaves, fish sauce, green onion, an egg, and a bit of salt and pepper.

We than wrapped up small bits of this in lốt leaves and put them in the frying pan to cook.

The leaves give these a unique, fragrant flavour. They are moist and delicious!

While we were making the fried tofu and the Chả lá lốt, Tu, Xuan, and LSU Van were working hard on making Nem (Vietnamese friend spring rolls)



We were running out of prep space so they worked on the floor!



They mixed together some minced pork, rice vermicelli, woodear mushrooms, carrot, thai basil, green onion, egg, salt and pepper, and chopped it all up into tiny bits!

Everyone had to pitch in to wrap all the spring rolls. It takes a long time!

I think Xuan wants some Nem!

We sat and ate all of these dishes as they were made, because we didn't want them to get cold! Then, once we had made the lasagna and it was in the oven, I hit my exhaustion point and sat down on the couch for a bit while the ladies continued to make chicken salad, Pho Cuon (rice noodle rolls) and one of my favourite dishes, Bánh xèo (Vietnamese Pancake).

ELRC Van assembling Pho Cuon

Xuan assembling Pho Cuon

An enormous pile of Pho Cuon!

Ever since the first time I had Bánh xèo I have absolutely loved it. It's a very thin crispy pancake filled with pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts, which is then cut into pieces and wrapped up with greens in a piece of rice paper, then dipped in Nước chấm (sauce made from sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, and chilies). It's also notoriously difficult to make. I had tried a few months ago, and ended up with a thick, mushy, tasteless pancake that was incredibly disappointing. So when LSU Van said she could teach me to make it, I was thrilled!

Pouring the batter into the pan.

Adding the fillings.

YUM!

These tasted good, but as you can see, the pancake still didn't come out thin and crispy like it's supposed to be! Van's comment was something like "It's good, but it's NOT BANH XEO!"

For some reason I don't have a picture of the chicken salad, but Tu and Xuan worked hard shredding the meat off of a chicken leg, and added onions and a lot of other tasty greens, plus a delicious dressing.

These three dishes came before the lasagna and cake, so we still had some room to eat them!

"PLEASE, Jenny, could you STOP taking pictures so we can EAT?"

For details about the lasagna and cake, see my previous post!

The ladies were good enough to stay and help clean up. Poor Van Comm was too short to put the dishes away though!

Staff Class Cooking Day Part 1 - Western Food

Many of you know that I am an English teacher here in Vietnam. One thing my university has done occasionally is provide English classes for not only the students, but also the Vietnamese staff that work there. Most of them already speak very good English, but of course there is always room for improvement! 

I was assigned to teach one of these classes last September. It's difficult for the students to find the time to come, so there wasn't a huge turnout, but I ended up with a core group of 4-5 young women that showed up fairly regularly, and we began to have a lot of fun!

The class was held at the end of the day, so you can imagine that by the time it was over we were often feeling pretty tired and hungry. It was around that time that I started this blog, and one of my first posts was the Spooky Monster's Fingers that I made for Halloween. I took a few of these to class to share with the girls, and they were a big hit! This prompted a discussion about how much they would like to learn to bake delicious cakes and other western food, and about how much I would like to learn to cook Vietnamese food. Thus the idea was born: Staff Class Cooking Day!

After much discussion about the menu, ingredients, cooking equipment, and scheduling, delays due to holidays and family visits, plus one cancellation due to an ache in my tooth, we finally got to have our day! 

Tu, Xuan, and 3 Vans (from now on referred to as LSU Van, ELRC Van, and Van Comm) came over to my place at about 9am on a Saturday. I had already bought most of the things I needed for "my" dishes (the Western ones) but we still needed a lot of vegetables. Luckily there's a market RIGHT outside my door! I watched as they negotiated prices for various vegetables, bought more garlic than I would ever imagine we would use, and negotiated for tofu, chicken, beef, pork, and live shrimp. I never buy meat in the market. For some reason I'm much more comfortable buying it at a supermarket, but the girls were adamant that the quality of the meat in the market is much better!

 The first order of business was to make a Mango Mousse Cake. I'd never made such a thing before, but it was Xuan's birthday the day before, and this was the birthday cake she requested. I wouldn't normally teach people to make something I've never made before myself, but after perusing some recipes I came up with some ideas I could work with, and we decided to give it a try.

LSU Van beating eggs for the sponge cake base.

They were so excited, I couldn't even get in to supervise!





ELRC Van preparing mango to be pureed.

They learned the most important lesson of baking - always lick the beaters!

And they learned it from the master.

When the mango mousse cake was done, it went in the fridge for the rest of the day to set.

We spent most of the rest of the day whipping up some Vietnamese food....look for my next post for details about that!

The other Western style dish we made was lasagna. Again, it was Xuan's request, as she was the only one who'd ever had it before! It was a bit questionable at first as to whether I'd be able to find the ingredients (you can get things here, but you can't always count on being able to get what you want when you want it!) but at the last minute I was successful!



Cheesy lasagna!



Vietnamese people don't tend to eat a lot of cheese, so the amount of cheese that goes into my lasagna was a bit of a surprise to them! Especially to girls who have never seen a cheese grater before! ("Jenny, how do you do this without grating your fingers?")

Tu, Xuan, and LSU Van enjoying their first taste of lasagna!
Too bad we were SO full by this time we couldn't eat very much!

After the lasagna, it was finally time to take the cake out of the fridge. We all crossed our fingers that it would be set!

Birthday wishes

The moment of truth.
Is it set?

Yes! Perfect!

Stay tuned for Staff Class Cooking Day Part 2 - about the Vietnamese dishes we made!