Cooking Vietnamese Street Food

We had a fun weekend of playing tourist again.  We took a class at the Hanoi Cooking School with some fellow teachers and some tourists.  The menu was Vietnamese street food which was makes sense.  We started off with some iced-...tea(?) made from a licorice tasting fruit that smelled like figs.  It wasn't bad, it wasn't good, it was unique.
First, we went to the local market in the Old Quarter.  It is a big version of the market that we shop at with a few more animal parts available.

How we buy our veggies if we don't go to Metro - we stick with cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, potatoes, peanuts and cabbage.  We don't bother with the muddy greens or tofu.  The veggies are fresh as ever, but you have to wash a lot of dirt off most or them, especially potatoes and onions.

Bored of chicken eggs that have been laid?  No problem, we've got chicken uterus and un-laid eggs.  They are... fresher(?) than laid eggs?

We also had some eggs that were on the other end of the spectrum, but we'll get to that later.

Could one of these toads escape?  Of course!  One was hopping along the ground just seconds after I took this picture

In the market that we shop at, the toads aren't in bags.  They are tied together with plastic string and left to hop around.  If they could only hop in the same direction, the could escape, but alas, toads don't cooperate with each other.

Plastic string is used to tie up these crabs.

Tripe being made into sausage.

Chickens.

Prawns!!!!!  Not to cheap though, 7 bucks a pound.  Still less than half of what it would be in the US though.

If you're tired, just sleep next to the fish.

Escargo.

 Fish.

Clams in large flat shells, not sure what kind of clams they are.

Goose eggs in the closest basket.  Chicken eggs to the right and fertilized duck eggs in the bag in the second basket.  (we'll see the inside of those eggs soon).

Piggy ears.

Quail eggs are cheaper than any other type.

Lungs, intestines and everything else you find inside a pig.  I've never seen lungs for sale but everyone here had them.

Squirmy eels.

This pig is missing his eyes.

Pig face, should your recipe call for it, it is available in Hanoi.

If you're not into everything else.  You can also get normal cuts of meat.

We went back to the cooking school.  The class was a mixture of demonstration and preparing our part of the meal.  Everything was in dishes (sugar/fish sauce and such) and we did a bit of cutting and mixing.  It was fun and informative.  We had looked at other menu options that may have taught us more about cooking, but this was the most appropriate menu to learn even if it was quite easy.

 Rice vinegar with sugar dissolved into it.  Then add fish sauce, diced chili and garlic and fancy green papaya and carrot.

Those eggs I mentioned.  The fertilized duck eggs were weird but delicious.  It was boiled for about 15 minutes.  Long enough to cool the yoke and the tiny baby duck.

 

See the little duck guy in there?  With a dash of dried chili and salt it tastes like hard boiled egg and duck.

We also made some normal food.  Spring rolls:

Vietnamese green papaya salad (with the same sauce as the dipping sauce).

Flambeing some bananas covered in sugar.  These were later simmered in coconut milk with nuts.

West Lake Prawn cakes are a batter that is mixed with sweet potato strips.  Stick two prawns on top and deep fry  - eat without peeling the prawns.  The exoskeleton just adds to the crunch!