Travelling Soul Sister

I am a huge fan of Vietnamese food, so upon deciding On Ho Chi Minh as our Holiday destination, I knew I wanted to experience a cooking class.

I pre booked our cooking class before we left Australia, I researched the menus that were on offer and locked it in, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to cook up a Vietnamese feast.

We chose ‘Saigon Cooking Class‘, located in district 1 on the first floor of the Hoa Tuc restaurant. They run classes from Tuesday – Sunday.

They offer the option for a half day gourmet tour, which includes a visit to the food hall at the Ben Tanh market, to pick out the fresh ingredients and then head back to the restaurant for the cooking class.

A different menu is offered for each day of the week,  we decided to attend on a Wednesday. Our menu consisted of:

We each had our own cooking space at a long communal table. Our teacher was incredibly patient, taking time to help each of us and show us the correct way of cutting, grating and chopping. The school does not use MSG which was a big incentive for me when choosing the cooking class.

We had a very happy and enthusiastic French tourist in our class, he had a GoPro on a selfie stick and I am pretty sure he filmed the entire three hour lesson.  I can just imagine his family sitting down to watch his video, listening to two Aussie girls giggling about the term ‘morning glory’, which of course is a vegetable, but in Australia, it can also be slang for …….never mind 😉

After introductions, discovering some handy tips and having a chance to use some of the cooking tools, we began on our first course – fried spring rolls with pork.

I am quite a spring roll fan and these certainly did not disappoint. They were packed with wood ear mushroom, glass noodles, fresh veggies and mince pork. We also made our own nuoc mam dipping sauce, with fish sauce, chilli, garlic and lime juice, deep fried our delicious cigar shaped bundles then sat down to feast.

There is something really satisfying about learning the correct way to prepare, cook and then taste your hand made culinary creation, I’m going to go ahead and say, they were the best spring rolls I ate the entire time I was in Vietnam!

We moved onto the second course, ‘lotus stem salad with prawns, pork and veggies‘.

I have never cooked with lotus stem before and was impressed with its flavour and texture, it complimented the fresh prawns, sliced pork and nuoc mam sauce so well.

The dish was topped off with fried shallots, which gave it a tasty crunch.

Our third course was ‘Char Grilled pork with rice noodles & veggies’. By this stage I was so full I didn’t know how I was going to fit it in, but once I tasted the final product, I somehow found the room.

We began by marinating the pork in honey and garlic, then chargrilling it.  We added the pork to our bowls of noodles, bean shoots and ‘morning glory’ which we had prepared earlier. Final touches were added, chilli and a sprinkle of sesame seeds, then we were able to sample our creation. The pork had a yummy smokey flavour from the chargrilling, it was a dish full of flavour and texture.

Our fourth and final course was a refreshing chilled summer pudding, I gobbled it all up before I had a chance to take a photo!  I thoroughly enjoyed our cooking class experience, I picked up some great cooking tips and learnt some delicious and easy recipes that I can recreate at home. We had a great teacher and at the conclusion of the class each student receives a cook book with the recipes for the dishes we had just cooked.

Saigon Cooking Class is a really fun activity whilst in Ho Chi Minh. My Sister and I had a great time, a lot of laughs and we even got to feature on a strangers home video.

Good times!

saigoncookingclass.com  Address: 74 Hai Ba Trung, District. 1, Ho Chi Minh City.                                                            Email: contact@saigoncookingclass.com