Cooking Class

Chiang Mai, Thailand

One of our goals is to learn to cook some new dishes, and hopefully carry that knowledge back home to enjoy. Well today we signed up for a Thai cooking class.

http://www.cookinthai.com/

We started the day with a walk to the local market with little wicker baskets in hand. Our class of five pupils intently listened while our teacher Tom (real name unpronounceable) carefully explained various exotic fruits, vegetables and concoctions that are commonly available here. It was quite an enjoyable and enlightening trip to the market. For the first time I could ask as many questions about things as I wanted and there was someone to answer. He even had some fresh coconuts shredded for us to make coconut milk later in the day.

Market Pictures




After the market, we headed back to the school and started with a welcome snack. Some sort of leaf folded into a little cup which we then filled with very small pieces of shallot, ginger, peanut, toasted coconut pieces, dried shrimp, hot chillies, lime, and topped off with some sort of salty dressing. The whole thing goes down the hatch in one flavorful bite.

Welcome Snack


Onto the cooking. In the morning we made a fried cashew nut with chicken, chicken in coconut milk, and spicy noodle salad. In the afternoon we made red curry paste from scratch (which I'm sure contained some sweat from our pounding with the mortar and pestle), a red chicken curry, fishcakes and a dessert that resembled blue playdough in coconut milk. It was all delicious, and it felt like we were on a cooking show because our dishes were always cleaned up for us, and the stove was always ready to go with a fresh pan whenever we needed it. All in all it was a very satisfying class, and we are considering spending another day learning a different menu.

Fried Cashew Nut with Chicken


More photos from Thailand can be found on our photos page.