Photo Essay: Pho(tolicious)!

The Red Bridge Cooking School is where we experienced the best pho in a month of traveling in Vietnam and amazingly, we were the ones who cooked it! Of course, we had a little help from our teaching chef. Pho, as most people already know, is the wildly popular and famous beef noodle soup found in almost every Vietnamese restaurant around the world. While in Hoi An my wife and I decided to take a cooking class and learn how to make this staple of Vietnamese life. The Red Bridge Cooking School sits on the banks of the Hoi An River in central Vietnam. They offer half day and full day cooking classes – take the full day class – it is not only more hands on and longer, but a much smaller group. The half day class must have had ten people in it, while our full day class had my wife and I and an organic farmer from Hawaii. First our chef took us to an organic farm where he strolled around nipping off herbs to let us smell and taste. The Vietnamese revel in freshness and use a mossy grass from the river as fertilizer and grow a plethora of vegetables and herbs in rich sandy soil. As he was washing some fresh picked herbs, a farmer hurried over and enthusiastically presented us with some just picked green onion. After we stocked up on fresh herbs and vegetables we popped over to the local market for some spices and sundries. Then it was over to the beautiful outdoor kitchen of the Red Bridge Cooking School where the chef’s assistants went about preparing our ingredients for cooking a la celebrity chef style. We lounged by the pool overlooking the river until they were ready for us with baskets of cleaned greens and neatly arranged spices in banana leaf boxes (Martha Stewart would be jealous). Our chef patiently guided us through several dishes even as we made a mess of the fresh rice noodles. We prepared pho (beef noodle soup), cha ca (clay pot fish with dill), grilled chicken with banana flower salad, and lemongrass shrimp wrapped in banana leaves. Along with the expert instruction we received printed copies of the recipes and descriptions of all the ingredients used. The best part was eating it all of course!

To whip up some Vietnamese specialties of your own, visit www.visithoian.com/redbridge.html next time you are in Hoi An!