We were collected in the foyer at 8.45 by Pot, a young Thai man who I had thought just to be our driver. After a couple more pickups we were off to the market to get a quick introduction to the fresh vegetables and herbs/spices we would be using later. It was quite an eye opener as the market certainly was no Central Market.
The veggies all looked super fresh and were incredibly cheap. He showed us the ones most well known for Thai cooking, some of which i knew and some Id never heard of (they have some weirdo looking mushrooms). He also showed us fresh turmeric which is a bright yellow root vegetable - I got to demonstrate it by having it rubbed on my forearm (I still cant get it off after much scrubbing :-( ).
After finishing up at the market we were onto the school to start cooking. The school was set up in a simple neighbourhood house, we prepared our food outside on a table right next to a set of wok burners. We started the day by each choosing the dishes we wanted to make. We made 7 different 'courses' and each course had a selection of 4 things to choose from. The three of us each tried to pick different things so we had a better range of tastings. By the time we made it outside to start we had already forgotten what we chose - lucky Pot had a good memory to make up for us.
We picked up our aprons and tools (cleaver and chopping block) and were ready to go. First up were the soups. Pot gave us our recipes on the go - I have trouble following one recipe let alone dishing out ingredients to a group of 7 people doing 4 different soups. The ingredients were presented to us on a plate - each plate had the ingredients for us all to make our dishes.
We pretty much prepared two dishes at a time and then went over to the woks and cooked them up. We then took them inside the house and ate them. We rested for 10 minutes then it was another two dishes. I asked Pot where he learned to cook and of course he learned it from his mother. He then spent 4 months in an apprenticeship and then cooked in restaurants as a chef for four years before becoming involved in the cookery school.
Thai culture has a very strong emphasis on cooking and almost every social event involves food.
To eat six-seven meals a day in Thailand is not unusual. Like Thailand's language and culture, the Thai cooking is divided in to four main regions in the country: The northern part, the northeast (Isan and Isaan) the central parts and the south. A complete meal often includes the five different tastes: Sweet, Sour, salt, bitter and the famous, spicy (phet). Access to different types of food and influences from the neighboring country's, has given the food in the respective regions its special mark: Northern (Chiang Mai area) is heavily influenced by the Burmese and Chinese.
Pot taught us a little trick for reducing the oil content in food when cooking it - Tony and Mum are demonstrating it below.
In one of the breaks during the day we all had a mini lesson at carving vegetables. Pot had seriously overestimated us if he thinks we were capable of copying him...haha
We certainly all agreed that the food that we made was the best we have eaten so far in Thailand. The winners for the day was Tony's Pad Thai noodles and Mums Spring rolls. Here are a couple of the dishes we made, clearly I cant show them all as we often gobbled them up without keeping a record haha. On reviewing the photos I note we have none of desert...hmm where did the sticky rice with mango and bananas in coconut milk go?
Chicken with cashew nuts
Chicken with holy basil
Hot and creamy soup
Green curry paste --->
Thai green curry
Pad Thai noodles
Spicy Pork Salad
The only downside to the whole day was the heat. The hardest part was certainly only grinding up the ingredients for the curry paste.
our teacher at work
It was really humid, and poor Tony sweat so much through the day that his glasses kept falling off - once they landed in my curry paste! We ended the day at around 4 pm, when we each received an apron, a cookbook of the recipes we made and a certificate! Ive wanted to do a cooking class each time Ive been here and now I'm so glad that we did it!
