Now We're Cooking.

After our trip to the market, we took a boat ride down the river to the cooking school.

It was a great opportunity to see the market from the other side.

And get a sense of life on the river.

The cooking class was held in a beautiful riverbank villa.

We were given a tour of the grounds, including a wonderful vegetable/herb
garden, where most of the produce used at the school is grown.

It was a lovely venue for the class.

Our chef was very well organized and had a great dry sense of humor.

And helped us turn out some delicious dishes, like this seafood salad in a pineapple boat.

We learned to make our own rice paper wrappers for spring rolls.
A simple, but time-consuming process we'll probably never attempt again.

O. slices and stacks the finished roll.

P.'s fried shrimp roll. Yum!

We also learned to make lovely decorations from a slice of cucumber and a tomato peel.

The final dish was a quick, intensely-flavorful eggplant stew.
This one we'll definitely be making again. Then, we retired to
the open-air dining room to feast on the fruits of our labors.
There was so much food, we couldn't eat it all,
though we certainly tried.

P.