Lao cooking school on Saturday

Four hours of cooking and you are not seeing dessert! On Saturday, we took a tuk tuk several miles out of town to attend a Lao cooking school taught by a young chef from a local restaurant. What I am displaying with such enthusiasm includes sticky rice with smokey eggplant dipping sauce, chicken-stuffed lemon grass, fish wrapped in banana leaves and a buffalo (water) gratin. This was all cooked over a charcoal-fueled brazier. Some of it was steamed (the fish and the sticky rice). The rest was cooked over open coals either directly or in a pan.

For a bit of perspective -- in the tribal villages, most Lao subsist on a diet of sticky rice and dipping sauce. About 60 percent of Lao live in these rural villages.