Rowdy and I took a cooking class in Hanoi at our hotel. Our instructor was Nguyen Thanh Van, the Assistant to the Executive Chef at the Hotel Metropole. She was delightful. Our first stop was the outdoor market in the Old Quarter. It was crazy and chaotic--lots of live animals, baskets of produce, people and mopeds everywhere.
Then it was back to the schoolroom in the hotel's Spices Garden restaurant. Thanh taught us how to make Vietnamese banana flower salad, deep-fried spring rolls, marinated pork grilled in bamboo, grilled chicken skewers with lemon leaves, steamed fish with beer and herbs and sauteed pumpkin branches with garlic.
Of course we were able to taste everything, and everything was delicious. We both received goody bags with an apron, cooking chopsticks, a wire holder for barbecuing, spring roll papers, vermicelli, black mushrooms and all of the recipes for our day's dishes.
And then, we were able to have an all-you-can-eat lunch in Spices Garden! It was heavenly! We had snail soup, and even that was delicious.
Today, R, K and I made banana flower salad and shrimp spring rolls. We need practice to make things look prettier, but everything was still delicious.
Today, I'm grateful for:
1) The cooperation and ease with which R, K and I worked together in the kitchen. I love my boys (including the one that's not here and our girl, of course!).
2) The opportunity to travel and see the beautiful, wide world and the interesting people who live on this earth with me.
3) Patience. It's something that I have struggled so hard to gain.
4) 30 Rock.
5) Book club tonight at Liz's with her, the Amys, Marilyn, Juli and Kathy. You don't have to have read the book to come to our club. We have a good discussion, but it mostly is about getting together and catching up.
6) SWBH, who will know immediately where I got the title of this post. (It's from The Muppet Frog Prince.)
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