What do you do when you have 11 hours to kill?

So our Mekong delta tour returned us to our hotel at noon. Our flight leaves at 11:55pm. What to do?

Take another cooking class!

And oh my goodness were we spoiled! I found HCM cooking class which is on a farm outside in the country & not only did they have an opening for this evening, Chef Tan was able to accommodate our special request of staying until 9pm and dropping us off at the airport!

Chef Tan’s HCM cooking school is not just a cooking school, it is an active organice 15 acre farm with just about everything you can think of. They grow their own mushrooms, 3 types of mint, at least 2 types of basil, radishes, lettuce, mustard, tapioca, melons, the list goes on. Then they have chickens, cows and pigs! One of the pigs just gave birth a day ago, so we got to see a whole lot of little piglets chowing down! Jackson got to milk his first cow!

We flew kites as the sun went down with an amazing sunset.

I am not making this up. I would have had a great time just visiting the farm & talking vegetables & livestock, but we got to pick 6 different meals to cook from! To say the least, Chef Tan and his crew were so awesome & accommodating to our special request, I’m still just in shock for how well the evening went!

We started out with stuffing pork & shrimp around a sugar cane, deep frying it & then wrapping it in mustard, lettuce, mint, basil and then dipping it in some great sauce. Wow.

Then we proceeded to make a eggplant chicken salad. We learned a new recipe for eggplant that was really good!

Then we cooked some oyster mushrooms in eggwhite & tapioca deep fried that tasted just like calamari & exploded a wad of rice noodles that literally popped from raw noodles to hard nest of noodles almost instantly.

We then took a small break, visiting the farm, milking the cow, visiting the new piglets, and then returned, few some kites for an hour and then returned to the kitchen to make….BANH MI!

We learned out to make Banh Mi! Can you believe it?

Then we learned how to make Bun Thit Nuong Tom, Michelle’s favorite dish, a cold noodle with hot shrimp & sautéed veggies with a sweet sour fish sauce.

Then for dessert we made banana coconut cream deep fried spring rolls!

 

And now we’re in the business class lounge waiting for our flight that takes off in an hour.

PS: We brought our leftover banh mi from the class! It will be a great snack!

See you all soon!