Our last two days in Chiang Mai were spent in a cooking class, a couple of neat museums, and exploring some more temples that we hadn't managed to get to yet, before jumping on a night train to Bangkok.
The class met at 9AM, and due to a pair of last-minute cancellations it was only the two of us and a Korean gal named Joy. We began by walking to the fresh market across the street, where our instructor Di picked up most of the ingredients we would use that day and gave a lot of interesting info on local produce.
Once we returned we busted out the essentials for making the base of most Thai dishes: red and green curry paste! You can buy them in-store of course, but with a mortar and pestle or food processor you can have a very fresh paste in no time, and the difference is huge. Once the pastes were mashed, we got on with learning the four most important tastes: Spicy, salty, sweet, and sour (in that order). Then we hit the kitchen!
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| Chilis, salt, onion, garlic, lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves |
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| Pumpkin hummus |
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| Fresh spring rolls |
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| Pad See Ew, Stir-fried veg, and Pad Thai |
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| Three varieties of Thom Yum and the coconut-milk Thom Kha |
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| Khao Soi, Yellow Curry, and Massaman Curry |
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| Som Tam and Thai fruit salad |
Andrew, the purple apron is you! We look forward to you showing off your culinary skills in Calgary!
ReplyDeleteThe good news is the class was vegetarian, so we learned options that don't involve killing Bob with shellfish. The great news for us (not ideal for you) is that a lot of coconut was used! Even mango sticky rice gets a coconut milk sweet sauce
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear Bob will be able to enjoy anything you two choose to whip up! I did notice that some of the dishes had coconut in the description...had hoped it was only a few of them.
DeleteSounds wonderful, learning to make these from scratch & tasting the difference! Of course your friends will now have huge expectations!
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