What's The Story?

The last time me Jenny and I were in Vietnam with my sister, Jodie we came as a part of the Maeve O'Mara Food Safari Tour which included a half a day with Miss Vy at her cooking school, Morning Glory.

Miss Vy told us the greatest story about how she got started.

She and her family had always worked for other people, she worked hard and saved all her money.  Her family didn't believe in banks so she would give all her hard earned cash to her mother, who would hide it in their house.  An opportunity arose to buy a small hotel and the price was $US100,000.  She told her mother and the mother said, "just give me a minute" and swiftly moved around the house collecting the money.  She returned with $US90,000.  Once they had counted it and realised they needed more, the mother again said, 'Just give me one more moment" and with that she did another turn around the house and came back with the final $US10,000 that was needed to pay cash for the hotel.  She didn't tell her husband because she didn't want him to say no and it was from all her hard work and now she is one of the most successful chef/business women not only in Hoi An, but in all of Vietnam.

My Vy owns quite a few restaurants in Hoi An, plus her cooking school.  She is a hands on owner and still takes the cooking classes for the big groups.

We had our class in this massive hall.  The walls were lined with different types of cooking demonstrations you could either watch, participate in or just buy the food for your lunch.

When we got there - we were HOT.  

H.O.T!

I'm talking about sitting in a sauna and baking type of hot, but they gave us freezing cold flannels to cool us down. Marie thought she'd do a 'Granny Duplex' or a 'Queen Victoria' with hers.

This is Cherry and she was our very smiley tour guide.  She was fantastic!  Her English was perfect and she had a great personality making the experience even more fun.

 The first thing we did was learn how to make rice noodles....

We had a go, but I'm not sure any of us should give up our day jobs just yet....

Next we moved around to the Weird Wonderful Food section and had a little tasting session......

 

Silk Worm Salad....

Spicy Snails in Lemongrass.....

Spicy Lemongrass Frog..... 

Snails.....

Duck Embryo.....

The one chap on our tour tried nearly everything, but the duck embryo finished him..... he didn't look well after downing this little morsel......

Hoi An Black Pepper Steamed Pig's Brains.....

 I thought to myself 'I have to try some of these foods', so I went for the least offensive - the silk worm.  I placed two on a rive cracker with a herb garnish and psyched myself up......

                             Here we go.......

I'll admit, I'm a little nervous....

 I sized it up and started negotiating with myself.....

In it goes......

This is when, if you look closely, my chopstick skills have failed me (without my knowledge!) 

I think I'm being so brave....

I'm thinking that this silk worm is in my mouth now and it's about to be really gross......

I commit to the project by closing my mouth......

 But something's not right....

What?  There's nothing in my mouth and there's nothing in my chopsticks.....

 Where could it be?
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Luckily I had a backup worm on my cracker and this time I wasn't letting it get away....

 I bit down and I chewed that sucker......











At first I wasn't too sure.... ⬇
 

Then, as I rolled it around a bit in my mouth I thought it was ok....... 

But then I remembered that it was a silk worm......

We were able to follow it up with some sticky rice variations which were scrummy.

 Next was showing our knife skills......

The bits of noodle were meant to be the same width......

These chefs made it look so easy, but let me tell you...... it's bloody not easy at all!

Even me Jenny, who's a fabulous cook was struggling.  Look at the dainty way she holds the big machete knife!

 All the ingredients in Vietnamese cooking are so fresh and flavoursome

And the flavour all comes down to the spices and herbs and oils and fish sauce

 After all our cooking, we were able to eat what we had made.....

Crispy pancake

We look great for a bunch of hot and sweaty ladies.  Our new best friend, Gemma is English, but she lives in Darwin, so she's used to the heat.

Fresh spring rolls...

and some gross thing that we made earlier.... it was only tasted by a few who described it as soggy lasagna... 

We had to put our name on our own soggy lasagna so we could eat our own, which is not always a good idea!  

I asked what my name - Shell would be in Vietnamese and I've been told it is Con Sò

Thanks Cherry and Thanks Miss Vy.