Vietnam – Hoi An – Part 2 – From Rain Forest to Mountain Peaks to Islands with L& C

Hoi An is also a culinary center, and we take the opportunity to learn a lot about the regional food.

In search of ingredients

Rice – one seed produces one or more stalks, each with a seed head that can produce 100 to 300 grains of rice – depending on growing conditions.

Tilapia and catfish farming – the blue wheels aerate the water.

Preparing rich soil for another vegetable crop.

Small plots with dense planting and lots of variety.

Rice — no inch of good soil goes unfarmed.

Mr. Sei – At age 96 he is still holding his own on his farm. One of his sons and his family live with him. He and his wife had a wonderful love story that lasted a lifetime. Sadly, she passed last year.

Learning about noodles — Northern Vietnamese cooking takes noodles and noodle-making to the next level. To understand more about this art form, we participate in a noodle class sponsored by a non-profit organization – Streets International (founded by a fellow Heller School grad and Board colleague) — that trains kids from the streets in the hospitality and restaurant business. Planeterra, the GAdventures foundation, supports the work of Streets International and has arranged for us to take this class presented by the students at Oodles of Noodles.

There are five main types of noodles used in Hoi An cuisine. The Cao Lau noodles in particular are unique to Hoi An – the rice noodlesd are soaked in ash water from a particular tree on Cham Island off the coast of Hoi An. This treatment gives them their dark orange color and a very earthy or smokey flavor.

The five kind of noodles in the regional cooking.

Demonstrating how to make the rice pancakes.

My Quang noodles are made by cutting strips from a rice pancake.

My Quang is a regional specialty noodle dish with these noodles plus shrimp, pork, a handful of fresh greens and herbs, and quails eggs. Very fresh tasty and even better enhanced with hot peppers and chili paste. The presentation at Oodles of Noodles is perfect!

Cooking Hoi An Style

As we continue developing our culinary talents, we enroll in a class on cooking Hoi An style. We have a brilliant and fun-loving instructor – “Pineapple” – and 5 dishes to prepare.

The menu of items (which we will consume at the end) is: vegetable spring rolls, banana-blossom chicken salad, Pho-Bo, smoked shrimp in banana leaf, mango sticky rice.

Good Vietnamese cooking is a high art form!! We learn how much we don’t know about the fine points of cooking a really flavorful meal. We are keeping our notes and will see how well we can reproduce these dishes for friends back home.