A technical Bon Appétit entry coming up!

Today I enrolled in a cooking class with three other students -- a friendly Australian couple and a strange, laconic Spanish guy -- for $40 a pop (and sizzle). That amount of money would have funded my diet here for a month, or more. But I feel as though I learned a few valuable tricks to make food taste Vietnamesey, a skill I hope to replicate back in Maine kitchens -- that is, if I can find dried ear mushrooms, black fish sauce and green mung beans.

The chef started off by explaining our ingredients, which the school had prepared prior to our morning class so we didn't have to do any manual labor other than stirring sauce with our chop sticks, pouring clams into clay pots, rolling a spring roll or two, and ultimately eating our creations.


Here at my station are, from left to right, the ingredients for spring rolls: red chili, garlic, purple shallots, green onions, salt, pepper, dried chicken powder pellets or bột thịt gà (the healthy, modern version of MSG), and coconut water. They were carefully arranged in delicate porcelain bowls (which still doesn't justify the class fee, I don't think). In the big bowls are tamarind sauce (made by soaking tamarind pulp in warm water for 10 to 15 minutes) and lime juice. And you can't see the black fish sauce and soybean oil at the back. Spring rolls have a lot going on, evidently.

To begin, we first made a light but spicy dipping sauce, which included sugar (there's sugar in everything). We also mixed in lime juice, fish sauce, garlic and chili.

Important note: This sauce is for the fried rolls only, which are like splashy ballroom dancers compared to their fresh-roll cousins, the clomping contra dancers. The fried rolls have so much more pizazz and flash! (I'll explain a bit more later.) The slighter fresh rolls require a sauce that's a bit heavier, to balance their insubstantiality, made with a base of yellow mung beans.

We had to cook up this mush for the rolls, which included mushrooms, dried shrimp, pork, taro (which can be replaced with turnip or sweet potato), and boiled crab meat.

Oh dear! I have no photo of the next important step. We laid out our flimsy round rice papers and dribbled coconut water over them, which supposedly gives the rolls their golden color when they're fried. Then we placed a dollop of the meat and mushroom mush in them and rolled them up before dropping them into hot soybean oil.

Here they are when they're done. But there's yet a few more steps before one is allowed to bite into them. They require fancy adornment, a few spangles and glitter.

The Vietnamese eat their fried spring rolls with fresh herbs -- sweet basil and mint, for example -- and roll them up with iceberg lettuce and white rice noodles. White rice noodles are cooler and more refreshing than normal pasta; they are like the sorbet of noodles.

The garnish, pictured above. There were probably orphans out back cutting up the tomatoes into these beautiful lotus-like flowers.

Here's a roll that's ready to be rolled up in lettuce leaf, mint, basil and rice noodles before being plunged into the dipping sauce. Although I'm not entirely sure about this, it seems that every tendency a food has toward a certain flavor or consistency has to be balanced with its opposite. So something fried and crunchy must be accompanied by ingredients that are simple, light and fresh. Fruit, especially sour fruit, is often joined here with salt and chili. (I've been told though, that this doesn't exactly counter the strong flavor, but rather brings out its undertones; in the case of tangy fruit, the salt-chili mix coaxes out its reluctant sweetness. The earthy, steadfast herbs might reinforce the fleeting crispness of the salty fried roll, which so instantly disappears in your mouth.)

Next, for our main dishes, we made coconut rice, caramelized pork in a clay pot, and sweet and sour clam soup with dill. Below the chef is pouring coconut water over the rice before steaming it in a clay pot. (It's also a good idea to cook rice with ginger if you're in poor health, we were told. And though I was heartily warned not to do it, I think steamed rice with coconut juice and ginger sounds deliciously reasonable.)

Below are the stages of caramelizing pork. Instead of pork, you can easily use any miserable meat substitute!

First, we cracked open our miniature red chili, a dramatic start to a dramatic dish.

Then we added other ingredients, including that salty dried chicken powder and caramel syrup (which the orphans made for us, but it is easy to make the syrup with sugar and water, or even sugar and coconut water).

Once you start cooking the pork in a clay pot, you have to add more sugar to caramelize the sauce. When the pork is done in about seven minutes, you sprinkle sliced green onions and a dash of pepper over it, and serve it with the delicate coconut-steamed rice.

But before the grand chow-down, we had to make sweet and sour clam soup with dill, a dish that comes from the north, probably influenced by the Chinese.

Here are some tomatoes, sour starfruit (which are considered a superfruit because they are so high in antioxidants), chopped green onion, dill and a red chili. In the bowl are small, white clams.

Not sure why, but the instructor made a big deal out of using a stirring spoon made from coconut. Every detail probably makes a drastic difference to the refined palette! To make the soup tarter and less sweet, you add more tamarind sauce and salt. For a sweeter flavor, you add more sugar.

Anyway, tart, sweet -- the soup was unbelievable! A supersoup! The instructor advised us to eat it when we were fighting off colds and other bugs.

Here's the final result above.


And for dessert, we ate a kind of che. This one has sweet boiled bananas (they're boiled in their skins with a dash of salt), tapioca, coconut milk and sesame seeds.

Bananas are everywhere; evidently there are 28 varieties in Vietnam. Here's a big one that's about to go into the steamer, much to the chef's delight.

And the course gives out certificates at the end, a cutesy move that still doesn't justify the price. But the food was very yumsicles. Even the tormented, neurotic Spanish guy seemed somewhat moved by the dishes. Hopefully they will reinforce his will to live!

And for all of you who made it through this lengthy post, I will reward you by making you these dishes, plus a sweet mung bean and seaweed chè when I come home!