Having eaten our way through south Vietnam we were keen to learn how to cook some of the delicious street food snacks we’d sampled. As the foodie capital, Hoi An was the place for us to do a cooking course. Ours started with a trip to the bustling local market. It was a sensory overload. Stacks of vibrantly coloured and exotically shaped fruits and vegetables obscured the short, pyjama-clad vendors. Their sales patter cut through the background hum of running engines, local chatter and clucks of caged chickens. Pleasant smells of fragrant herbs mingled with the pungency of fish and meat, warming in the morning heat. Whenever you stood still for more than ten seconds you’d be barged by an impatient market-goer or, worse, a motorbike pushing through what seemed to be impassable gaps. In our group were three American tourists (unfortunately doing nothing to abate their national stereotype), who hounded our guide with a stream of questions. They were astounded to learn that all the fruit and veg on sale were grown in Vietnam, let alone in the local area… clearly this was no Walmart.
We headed to the fish and seafood section to buy some prawns for the spring rolls we’d be making later – an altogether different experience from the British fishmonger. There were live crabs shackled with elastic bands and large fish, squirming in their overcrowded, shallow buckets of barely-oxygenated water, waiting to be put out of their misery. I was given the task of carrying the prawns and now and again I’d jump at the sudden jerky movements coming from the bag. What with this, and the squawks of live poultry, we were half expecting to see roaming pigs and cows when we went indoors to the meat area!
Once we’d stocked up on all the ingredients for the class, we hopped on a boat to the cookery school. Up first were fresh spring rolls, aka summer rolls. We encountered these all over Vietnam. The flavour and texture of each ingredient is much more discernable than in the deep fried variety. Rolling was a precise art – the order the ingredients are placed in the rice paper is important for the final aesthetic as you want to see the prawns aligned neatly through the translucent paper, their coral colour contrasting with the green lettuce beneath them. Mine were perfect (obviously), but in his impatience to eat something Laurence was scolded for being too hasty in his arrangement of the prawns. After proudly scoffing our creations, dipped in a peanut sauce, we moved on to our next dish.
Banh Xeo is a savoury pancake made from rice and coconut milk. Ours were filled with pork, prawns and beansprouts. Our cooking instructor was overly cautious with instructions for safe pancake flipping – ironic for a nation which seems to drive on both sides of the road! Once flipped, we filled our pancakes with herbs and lettuce and wrapped them in rice paper. To accompany this, we made a sweet-sour chilli dipping sauce.
Our third dish was probably our favourite: beef noodle salad, or Bun Bo Nam Bo. The salad was a well-balanced dish, full of contrasting flavours (lime, soy, chilli and beef), textures (roasted peanuts, crunchy vegetables, soft tender beef and noodles) and temparatures (cold noodles and vegetables with warm beef and dressing).
By this point we were pretty full but managed to squeeze in a bowl of warm pho – our final dish. Pho (noodle soup) is ubiquitous in Vietnam and we’d eaten plenty, but this one was Hanoi-style, which we had not yet tried. Laurence had great memories of one he’d tried in Berlin though. Pho Hanoi is gently warming with its background of smoked star anise and cinnamon – spices which we hadn’t seen much of on our travels so far.
We’ve got the recipe cards so everyone can look forward to a Vietnamese feast on our return!
Wanderlust to Wonderment 
If Im to visit Vietnam, it’s because of the food