From Market to Market!

25 Jan

I wrote the request for a cooking class on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning, Nam arrived with the ingredients for our meal. I wanted to make typical Vietnamese food. Together we decided on tofu stuffed with pork in tomatoes, nem (fried pork spring rolls), salad, and soup.

We had to start at 10 AM to have our feast ready for lunch. The morning came early and the four of us cooking students arrived to the kitchen a bit tired and frazzled. However, once we got the coffee rolling and the music blasting, we were ready to go.

Nam was really entertaining. His favorite actress is Sandra Bullock and his favorite movie was Miss Congeniality. However, he also knew what he was doing and was able to manage the four of us – even as we could not do the things he does in his sleep, like flip fried tofu, cut carrots into flowers, and slice tiny peppers so that they can blossom in water and turn into a garnish.

We tried to keep up with him by scribbling down ingredients and recipes. He was conducting us with the ease of a maestro.  I think we would all agree that making nem was the best part – mixing pork, onion, dried mushrooms, mien noodles, and egg into a batter that is that spooned into rice paper, rolled up carefully and fried (Needless to say, we had some rolling and frying mishaps).

I plan to recreate the fried tofu in tomatoes, but would probably leave out the pork stuffing.  The soup was only so so, the fish sauce/sugar/MSG dressing made the salad tasty, and the morning glory with garlic was yummy, but nothing special.

I loved the way Nam had all these little tricks – like squishing garlic with a spoon and using chopsticks to test if the oil was hot enough for frying. He had tricks up his sleeves, but I learned to real secret to Vietnamese cooking was MSG. I always suspected it was in my food, but did not realize the extent of its prevalence until he made us go to the market to buy a “seasoning pack.” He made us taste everything before declaring that it needed more “seasoning,” the innocent euphemism for MSG.

From Market to Market!
During the cooking process – the big pot was the mush for the nem!

MSG aside, the cooking class was a success. We finally sat down to eat around 1 pm and had way more food than we could handle. Since taking the class, I’ve talked to many people who want Nam’s number and I have received many more messages from Vietnamese people eager to teach me how to cook. Hmm, it looks like I have come across an untapped market….!
From Market to Market!
The final product – note the garnishes :-)


From Market to Market!
Yum! Enjoying our meal. I asked Nam to stay and eat with us, but he was running late to meet his friends. We will definitely try to make this a regular event.

One Response to “From Market to Market!”

  1. momma 25. Jan, 2010 at 8:31 pm #

    Yum! Maybe your next challenge for Nam should be a msg-free menu:)

    Reply

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