Now We're Cookin'...

Chiang Mai, Thailand

July 30, 2007
N 18°47.209
E 098°59.602

Since we arrived in South East Asia almost two months ago I’ve been dying to take a cooking class. Teddy and I talked about taking a class in Hoi An, but there was so much shopping to do that we never got around to it. I told Marc that we were going to take a class in Chiang Mai—regardless.

As soon as we arrived in Chiang Mai I started researching different cooking schools, grabbing fliers and finally deciding on a specific school, class and date. The Pad Thai Cooking School came highly recommended by our guest house (I am sure they get a kick back) and the menu looked very enticing with all of our favorite Thai dishes in a single-day course.

The class started with a tour at the local produce market where Nokkie, our instructor, explained the various types of basil, ginger, eggplant and tamarind. The majority of the items I had seen before and are available in Bay Area grocery stores or Chinatown. After about a 40 minute tour of the market, smelling curries, tasting fresh fruits, and collecting the necessary produce for the day’s class, we all climbed back into a taxi and made our way to the cooking school.

The class structure was very conducive to learning. Nokkie had a great sense of humor and was able to explain things in a way even beginner cooks could understand. The staff did an excellent job prepping all of the ingredients for each and every dish. We would simply perform some minor mixing and cutting for each dish, walk the ingredients over to our individual station, and watch a short demonstration by Nokkie before we made our own version. Each of us had to eat what we made, so we couldn’t mess it up!

The first dish was a classic Pad Thai, one of my favorite dishes, but I rarely order it in a restaurant because it tends to be gooey and drowning in sauce. However, when we made Pad Thai in the class, it was fresh with the perfect blend of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.

Following the Pad Thai we made fresh vegetarian Spring Rolls and Tom Yam Gong (Prawns in spicy coconut milk soup). I probably wouldn’t make the spring rolls at home, but we will definitely make the delicious spicy soup. In fact, I have made this dish in the past and loved it, but now I have a simple recipe where the dish takes minutes instead of hours. We were able to add us much spice as we wanted for our individual portions and had one of our first spicy meals in Thailand.

Next, after stuffing our faces on the soup and spring rolls, we prepared a Chicken Green Curry and Stir Fried Chicken with cashew nuts, again commenting on how simple the recipes seem and how fresh the dishes were. We probably won’t try the Stir Fried Chicken recipe at home since flames shot into the air, at least three feet above our wok, adding a little excitement to the afternoon.

After stuffing ourselves with the last two dishes, and being on our feet in front of a hot wok for about six hours (how do chefs do it?), we didn’t want to move. Just when we felt like we were ready to take a nap our instructors mentioned dessert. That woke us up! We had our option of three different dishes for dessert—mango with sticky rice, banana in coconut cream or black sticky rice pudding with young coconut.

Marc and I each tackled a different dessert to give us a little more variety when we serve these great recipes to our friends and family when we return from our travels. I took the mango with sticky rice (my favorite) and Marc was a trooper and conquered the banana in coconut cream. After we both finished, we got back together and shared our tasty treats.

I know Marc didn’t really want to go to the cooking class and I didn’t make him, he knows he’ll never really get to cook the dishes in my kitchen, but he was really happy he went and can provide input when I am cooking. I am sure that will go over very well!