After nearly 4 months away from the comforts of home, I finally got to cook! 
Cooking is probably the thing I’m missing the most about living at home and being in one place night after night. When my everyday life usually consists of me cooking at least 6 nights a week and preparing breakfasts and lunches everyday, searching for somewhere to eat for three meals a day can get a little tiring.
I tend to not like eating in the same place too many times because I think there’s too many place out there to try so why should you keep returning to the same place again and again, if somewhere’s really special then maybe return occasionally but why not give other places a chance? I think after this amount of time travelling we have come to the conclusion that we are going to have to return to certain eateries, mainly because we want to try local food as much as possible and we can’t eat the entire menu in one sitting so if we liked what we had the first time, we’ll return to sample the other offerings and also because otherwise you spend all of your time looking for somewhere to eat and then end up eating mediocre food just because you thought you should try somewhere new!
Anyway, back to the point of this post, Saigon Cookery Class! I’d been planning on doing a cookery class here in Vietnam and after the first food we ate here I knew it was a good choice – the food’s amazing! I’d been searching on the internet and this place popped up a few times with great reviews so I sent an email and booked our places. I got a very quick friendly response confirming the booking and checking whether we have any allergies (they tailor the course to any special food requirements). They cook a different menu each day so you choose which day is best for you and choose whether or not you want to join the chef at the market earlier in the morning to buy the foods for the course (I would definitely recommend this as you learn so much more and have the chance to ask him about anything you want!) The class size is up to 12, there was 6 in ours which I think was ideal for getting chance to ask questions and it being more sociable – 12 maybe too much.
So, we arrived at Ben Thanh market at 8.45am to meet Chef Khang, the other people on the course and to start our shopping! He explained each area of the market, the food and what we would be cooking. A couple of interesting points were:
On the 1st and 15th of each month, Buddhists eat only vegan food, as such there was a stall specifically for vegan food but as they eat meat the rest of the time, a lot of it was like our ‘Quorn’ as in, it resembled meat.
There’s a big board up in the fruit and veg section that gives you the current selling prices of each item so, once you’ve learnt the Vietnamese for whatever you’re wanting to buy you can work out the selling price to ensure you’re not getting ripped off.
We got a taxi to the cookery school (near the Opera House), sat down for a glass of iced tea, washed our hands and donned our aprons, let’s cook!
With simple, ‘copy me’ instructions, it was a really good morning, we made each course and then tasted it. Each one was great! And we did a bit of fancy flower making (out of a chilli pepper)…
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable day with a fun, knowledgable chef and some simple, tasty recipes to take home!
Highly recommended!
