We pay our $25 each and meet an Australian who along with her Lao family own the restaurant and hold cooking classes. We sit with her for an hour or so and discuss the next day's timetable and what we will be cooking. We receive a copy of their recipe book which includes 12 recipes, information on essential ingredients, Lao people and culture to study.
The next day we promptly arrive for 10am to be introduced to our teachers Neng and Leng and then we hop in a tuk tuk to arrive at the Phousi market for a tour. Neng takes us through the market and shows us some of the ingredients in Laos cooking and what we will be using today. Asian greens, garlic, galangal, Kaffir lime leaves, lime, coriander, lemon grass, tamarind, basil, oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chillies, Chilli peppers, coconut milk, rice noodles, vermicelli noodles, rice, bamboo shoots, woodear fungus, also known as cloud ear fungus, choko and lastly padak, a pungent, fermented fish sauce using fish salt and rice husks. We pass the bamboo stall where you can buy bamboo steamers especially to cook sticky rice, a sort of conical shape and quite comical when we are told that many tourists mistake them for hats, buy them and wear them around town.(In fact we saw a girl wearing one at the airport and I was dying to walk up and tell her tht she was wearing a sticky rice steamer on her head, but Adam and I were chuckling too hard.)
Traditionally each family has their own special recipe for padak and it would be stored in clay jars in their house. The Laos use padak for its protein, flavour and salt content but now shrimp paste is used as a substitute in most households because it doesn't fill their house with a fishy aroma and it also saves time. Concentrated shrimp paste comes in small tins or plastic containers and is also very salty and pungent, smelling of fish and shrimps but once it is combined with other ingredients, the smell is lost and the flavour remains. According to my recipe book - A Lao saying is that when you can dip a raw bean in the shrimp paste and enjoy eating it you are 'truly' Lao.
Back at the school we have a coffee break and then we are ready to start.There is only Adam and I in the class so we have their full attention and a work station each. But it turns out we only get enough ingredients to cook once for each recipe, so we pair off. This should be interesting, Adam and I have never taken a class together.
The first two recipes are demonstrated by Neng and then Adam and I get the chance to share the preparation of each dish and then eat the food we have cooked.
The first dish is Luang Prabang Salad - usually served at all special occasions. It is basically a mixed leaf salad with watercress, tomato, cucumber, crushed unsalted peanuts, boiled egg, a homemade mayo made from hard-boiled egg, and optional fried ground pork. Neng tips us off and winks and says the more pork in this salad the better. This was easy and the mayonaise was most interesting to me as it was made with hard boiled egg yolk. It was nice but if I made it, I would change the presentation and add the mayo at the last possible moment before serving so it doesn't drown the leaves.
Next we cooked Feu Khua (rice noodles with chicken and vegetables), a tasty dish if you get the texture of the noodles right, otherwise it can go horribly wrong. This dish is a great way to use up the vegetables you have in the fridge.
Adam and I breeze through as they are quite simple dishes to make and we finish early so we sit down to eat our dishes and relax while Neng and Leng clean up our station.
The next three dishes in our cookbook are demonstrated, we have a tasting and need to decide on two to cook. We leave out the Oh Paedak (Lao pork casserole), as it is a very easy dish to cook at home. We choose Chicken Larp (Chicken Salad) and Green Papaya Salad, two of our favourite dishes in Lao, they both have intense flavours.
The Chicken Larp is a traditional Lao cold salad made with mince chicken, pork, fish or tofu, banana flowers, kaffir lime leaves, spring onions, shallots, garlic, coriander, lemongrass, rocket, roasted rice powder, chilli powder, fish sauce, crispy fried garlic and spring onion and lemon juice.
The green papaya salad combines the sweet and sour taste that the Laos enjoy so much in their cuisine. The green papaya salad is one of those dishes that you can tweak the flavours to your own liking. Each person has their own favourite combination, sometimes more chilli and less sugar or more fish sauce, you decide. I like my green papaya salad with a less shrimp paste and fish sauce as I find it a little too fishy for my liking, whereas Adam enjoys those flavours and like the added heat of a few more chillies. So we compromise and we sit down to taste our creations and find that neither of us are satisfied with our green papaya salad. It really is one of those dishes that should be made for each individual. The chicken larp was a success. An intensely flavoured salad but each ingredient is essential to get the texture and the 'wow factor' of flavour. Using the same dressing you might like to substitute the green papaya for green beans or cucumber.
Our last dish that we cook for the day, Khua Maak Kheua Gap Moo (Fried eggplant with pork) is one of those dishes that if you are not a fan of eggplant/aubergine, you certainly will be after you taste it. The aubergine melts in your mouth and compliments the saltiness of the pork and oyster sauce.
At last I get a demo on how to cook sticky rice and the famous jeowbong (the people of Luang Prabang say that their recipe is far superior than anywhere else in Laos and their right, I have included the recipe in a previous entry). I have been keen to learn the technique of cooking sticky rice and the ingredients of jeowbong, it is one of the best chilli pastes I have ever tasted and goes with just about anything and stores well in the fridge.
We feast yet again while Neng and Leng clean up. We enjoyed our day and Adam and I survived working in the kitchen together, the dishes were easy to prepare and we could have just followed a recipe and cooked these at home but it was all worth it for the technique of cooking sticky rice and the recipe for jeowbong.
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