Four Months in Vietnam With Maxine: May 1, 2012

I've wanted to take a cooking class here in Vietnam, but it's pretty expensive for just me, but the class would take me to the market, choose ingredients, then cook and eat what I've cooked. Carie's mom goes to the market in her neighborhood, so I decided to ask her if I could tag along someday to see what she buys, then help her make a meal. So last Tuesday she and I took her motorbike to the local market.

Chó means market and Bãu Sen is the name of the market.

First we went to the fish section. She selected two beautiful live fish, the lady whopped them on the side of their heads, then proceeded to gut them, cut off the fins, and scale them for us. From another vendor we got some shrimp. Then we moved on to the vegetable section and she bought a taro, some greens, and some garlic. She also bought some oranges which were green and really big and she got a bag of lemon grass with a little red pepper mixed in. We went to the meat section next, and she bought some ground pork. She also got a couple packages of rice paper for us to make spring rolls.

We took all these ingredients home and she started to cook lunch.

First she took those big oranges and squeezed us a couple of glasses of orange juice with a little bit of honey. Very refreshing after a morning of shopping. Then she proceeded to clean the fish. She's very careful about getting all the insides clean and all the blood out. I don't remember the one fish's name, but another was called bassa. After cleaning, she rubbed them with a marinade of the garlic, lemon grass, red peppers and let them sit for a couple of hours.

The most fascinating dish she made was taro soup. A taro is a vegetable from tropical climates and some are white and some are purple. She bought a purple one.

Once she peeled the outside, the inside was a deep purple. She then grated the pulp and it was a gummy consistency that she added to a small amount of pork in a pot with lots of water.

Then while that was on the stove and the fish were frying, we made spring rolls. She took the pork, shrimp, lots of other ingredients, mixed them up with grated carrots and we placed them on the rice paper and rolled them up.