I love cooking!  What I hate is the dicing and mincing or anything that involves food preparation.  I’d much rather have everything prepared already and I just go ahead and cook.  That’s why I love that garlic can be bought minced in the supermarkets now.  Now don’t get me started with onions.  That tears me up!

I was actually hesitant to go to the Saigon Cooking Class session at Hoa Tuc — because I’m really just a novice in the kitchen.  But now that the session is over, I’m glad I came.  Hopefully I can rope in some friends to join me next time. 🙂

From the Gourmet Market Tour, we headed to Hoa Tuc’s classroom for cooking sessions.

Hoa Tuc and the other restaurants beside it are housed in what used to be an Opium Refinery.  Hoa Tuc actually means “Opium Poppy” and the same theme is very much seen on the opium poppy designs on the walls, menu, and seat covers.

Since it was a Thursday, the 3 dishes we had to prepare were fresh spring rolls, sticky rice stuffed with pork, bun thit nhuong!

Janet and I had Chef Phuong all to ourselves.  I think small classes are more effective and Chef Phuong was able to assist us all throughout.

My most favorite part of the class is learning how to make the peanut sauce for the fresh spring rolls!

The sticky rice with stuffed pork was a tad bit complicated.  We had to cook using the pan and deal with very, very sticky rice.  But it looked good when it came out.  We deep-fried this in peanut oil.

For the bun thit nhuong, we had to do some barbecuing —

to come up with this filling dish!

Of course we had some dessert too courtesy of Chef Phuong — passion fruit custard!

Janet and I went home with our “certificates” which included the recipes!  Thanks Chef Phuong for the terrific session!