On our first full day in Hanoi, we took a cooking class through a company called Apron Up. Our experience started at 11:30am with our guide for the day, Vicky, taking us to a local market to show us how the locals shop and to buy a few things we would need for the day, including some chicken sitting out in a wicker basket. We’ve become pretty desensitized to seeing open market sights after 2.5 months in SE Asia, but this was our first time picking up some fresh market meat to consume. We briefly pondered the reasoning behind our strict food safety protocol in the U.S. and if that should make us concerned about this room temperature poultry (it was about 68 degrees F that day), but we moved past that thought pretty quickly and returned our focus to not getting any animal innards on our shoes as they were being butchered around us.
Once back at the kitchen, we wasted no time in Aproning Up and getting right to work. Vicky had her hands full with our group of ten, including 6 Hartshorns, 3 Moes, and a Cox, but she made it look easy organizing us all in preparing 6 dishes over the course of about 2.5 hours. We worked together to make beef pho, banana blossom salad, lemongrass “worth-the-risk” chicken, 5-spice beef, morning glory salad, and some incredible egg coffee. We usually only let our boys have a few sips of coffee drinks, but for this special occasion all 10 of us partook in full cups of the extravagant egg coffee and it was oooooh so good (Tate found his coffee a little too strong and let Keegan (of all people) finish his—I paid for that later as a wide-awake Keegan still couldn’t fall asleep at 11pm). Everything was great, and Vicky was a wonderful guide. We all had fun and walked away with lasting memories, happy tummies, espresso-induced caffeine buzzes, and new Vietnamese cookbooks so we can add these dishes to our menus once we get back to our kitchens. If you come over for dinner once we get back, there’s a high probability you’ll be served either Thai or Vietnamese cuisine!
What a fun experience!
😋