Thai Cooking Class

This is where the magic…happened.

I knew from the start that I wanted to take a cooking class in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I love Thai food, and for cooking courses, my research said this was the place. Fortunately, my research was correct! I arrived at my hostel in Chiang Mai (Green Tulip House; very nice, I recommend) and before even checking into my room the extremely chatty hostess Stella sat me down and started handing me brochures. After thinking about it for a day, I settled on Sammy’s Organic Cooking, which was an all day course at Sammy’s farm. I ended up going with a friend I made at the hostel, which was nice.

Mmm, rice.

These coconuts never got a chance to migrate to England.

We were picked up by Sammy himself around 8:30 in the morning. After driving around the city to pick up the other participants, we drove to the market where Sammy does his shopping. We chose the dishes we would each make from a list, and his assistant went around to pick everything up. Sammy gave us a brief lesson on the differences between types of rice, which I promptly forgot, other than the fact that there were at one point over 100 different varieties. Now it’s mostly two, sticky rice and jasmine rice. The rice is sold by weight, but the old technique of dipping a tin cup is still an option. Each barrel of rice is labeled with the region it was grown in and the price by weight. I forgot to ask why the region would matter – anyone out there know? Sammy then showed us how fresh coconuts were made into coconut milk, which was pretty cool. The coconut is drained of water, then cracked open and put in a machine that essentially grates the entire coconut into flakes. The flakes taste and feel quite dry, but even squeezing it in your hands is enough to get some milk out. The flakes are then put in a machine and mechanically pressed to get all the liquid out, and there’s a surprising amount held in each coconut. Pure, fresh coconut milk tastes amazing, I must say. The pressed coconut is now used only for animal feed or mulch, as it has no remaining culinary use.

The stage is set, the crowd is hushed.

After our market visit, we headed to Sammy’s farm. The day was overcast with frequent rain showers, which actually made for a very pleasant experience at the school, since the cooking area was outdoors but covered. The temperature was nice and the rain made for good background noise as we cooked. Sammy runs the school with his wife and two assistants, at least one of whom is in training to be a chef. If I understood him correctly, Sammy and his wife used to run a restaurant down in the islands, but got tired of that life and decided to move up north, where I think he’s from? Not exactly clear on that. His sister runs the best vegetarian restaurant in Thailand, according to Sammy.

Sammy the master chef.

We started out preparing our curry paste of choice. I chose to make yellow curry, as I don’t love green curry and the red curry was spicy, which I didn’t feel like just then. The curry pastes are very similar, using the same base ingredients and just a couple different items to make them unique. Yellow curry has fresh turmeric, which I had never seen before. It looks like a very smooth piece of ginger until it’s cut, at which point the bright yellow-orange inside is visible. It doesn’t smell or taste like all that much, but it stains your hands quite quickly! Using a mortar and pestle, you grind everything into a paste, which actually happened very quickly. We then moved to the cooking station, where each person had a burner and pot along with various ingredients. The curry paste is fried in some coconut cream (the thick part of the coconut milk) and then the other ingredients are added. Simmer for a while, then add fish sauce to taste. We transferred this to a bowl and put aside.

Making our curry paste.

Next up was the soup. You’ll be shocked to hear that I chose to make Tom Kha Gai, or Chicken in Coconut Milk soup. It’s very simple if you have the ingredients – coconut milk, chicken, lemongrass, galangal, and a number of other items. Cook and add fish sauce to taste (you don’t really taste the fish sauce unless you add a huge amount, it’s more of a flavor enhancer). Put aside and pull out the wok for the final and main dish of the meal. We only had a few options, so I chose to make Phad Thai. The ingredients for this were prepared for us, which is nice but I like the mechanical parts of cooking, so I would have been happy to do it myself. Crack the egg into the wok and quickly scramble, then add the shallot and tamarind. In goes soy sauce, water, and the par cooked noodles. Let simmer until the noodles have absorbed all the liquid, then quickly add the bean sprouts, green onion, and tofu. Then it was time to plate everything and move to the table for lunch! Sticky rice was provided for us (it steams for several hours, so we couldn’t do that ourselves) and we all enjoyed. Everything was delicious, and it’s very satisfying to eat a special meal that you cooked for yourself!

 

Mmm, curry.

Phad Thai, pre-wok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best toilet in Thailand, apparently.

After lunch we took a break. Sammy has a very nice little garden area set up with hammocks, chairs, and “the best toilet in Thailand”, which Sammy is very proud of. We were all so full that a break was necessary! When we reconvened an hour or so later, it was time to make the appetizer and dessert. If you’re thinking that the order of cooking is strange, well…so did we. Ah well. For appetizer, we had a choice of fried spring roll, papaya salad, or chicken in pandanus leaf. I chose the papaya salad, since I’ve never made that before, Again, everything was basically prepared for us, which was a little disappointing. Unripe papaya is shredded and mixed with a little carrot for color. You use the mortar and pestle to combine fish sauce, soy sauce, and palm sugar, then add raw green bean, garlic and chilies and make into a dressing for the salad. This was very tasty, but I was still full from lunch and only had a little. While we were eating our appetizer, Sammy and his wife deep fried bananas for us, which were very tasty! There’s no real trick to it – tightly wrap the banana in a rice flour crepe, then put in hot oil.

Please don’t lick your computer screen like I just did.

Then came the dish I was waiting for: mango with sticky rice!! Easily one of my favorite foods ever. The sticky rice was already prepared, as I said earlier. We combined coconut cream with palm sugar, a pinch of salt and some cinnamon (I think) powder and warmed it through. You then combine that with the sticky rice until just right, and let sit for a few minutes. Serve on a plate with sliced mango. I tried to be artistic with mine, but I don’t think food art is my calling. Either way, it was absolutely delicious, and I will certainly be making this for myself in the future.

Proof!

We had a wonderful day learning from Sammy. I’m hoping that when I get back to Thailand in several weeks, I will be able to take another course with different dishes, and maybe learn something about food and the role it plays in Thai culture. But in the meantime, I had delicious food and added some recipes to my personal cookbook!