Hue Food Cooking Class

Being the royal capital, means that Hue was also the center for the making of royal food and since the 1600's has been a culinary wonderland, blending all manner of delicious tropical fruits with seafood and all kinds of delightful rice dishes. Fortunately the long years of struggle with French colonials and hamburger-eating Americans plus about fifteen years of drab Soviet Socialism did nothing to dull the tastebuds of Hue people. After visiting some sites on a steamy afternoon, we entered a famous local restaurant where the chef taught us how to make steamed rice cakes, thus further steaming us in the hot kitchen before I persuaded the chef to let us make rice cakes out on the veranda. Here Collin Radakovik makes "banh la", a rice cake stuffed with ground shrimp and crab in a banana leaf that is then steamed. I'm working with Collin to shave the beard as he, like many a French lieutenant who came to Hue in the 1860's before him, is going to be very, very hot here wearing the beard and long hair. Fortunately people here are into styled long hair, so he might manage to get to an asian barbershop for a locally styled do.

After we made about three different steamable dishes, we were then directed over to another table where after some twenty minutes we were then able to eat our own cooking. Had the chef only told me this before, I would have worked harder! Should have known. Anyways, except for a few dumplings too heavy on rice and not enough shrimp and a few blanks with no shrimp in them at all, everything tasted great. To celebrate our making royal food, Giosep Vo and Anna Nguyen donned the royal garb so we could eat in the presence of a king and queen. The queen today was definitely assertive, like many Vietnamese heroines before. Is the king shy?