Chiang Mai prides itself on it’s foodie nature, offering various special culinary delights only available in the region. One of the most popular activities in Chiang Mai is a Thai cookery course, so of course we decided to indulge ourselves and were whisked away early one morning to ‘Asia Scenic Thai Cooking School’, where we had forked out for a full day class based at their farm in the countryside.
Indy, our instructor, took us to a local market in Maejo where she walked us through some of the more obscure stalls, and gave us handy hints for cooking Thai food at home – namely how not to screw up making rice and noodles! She was very friendly and had an excellent dry sense of humour: “I have to count you all because Western faces all look the same to me!”
The market was vibrant, bustling and full of fresh produce. There were tables weighed down with bright vegetables, buckets of rice and shelves of noodles, and a butchery room that was definitely not for the faint hearted or the vegetarians among us: every piece of a pig you could imagine laid out in front of you, and live fish flapping around on tables!
We were bundled back in the van and taken to the farm. It was absolutely beautiful – large grounds growing organic fruit and vegetables, a big pond and about 3 different kitchen/dining room set ups for all the groups that would be cooking that day. Indy gave us a welcome snack of lemongrass tea (not great) and ‘mieng kham’ – you take one of the betel leaves, fold it up to make a little cup and put in all of the garnishes (shredded coconut, peanut, lime, ginger, galangal, shallot, chilli, sugar paste), eating the whole thing in one bite. It was refreshing and a nice amuse bouche before our day of cooking and feasting began!
We were then taken on a tour of the gardens, given the chance to pick and taste some of the fresh herbs and shown where all the vegetables are grown. It was really interesting, and Indy was a great, enthusiastic guide.
We made our menu choices – we got to make a total of 7 dishes! A stir fry, a salad, spring rolls, a soup, curry paste, curry and dessert. Phwoar. Harry and I chose different things so that we could try as much as possible.
We gathered around a long table, put on our aprons and grabbed our cleavers. Ingredients were passed down the line depending on what our choices were, and Indy told us how to cut the vegetables and herbs, preparing a plate of ingredients ready to take over to our wok stations. She demonstrated how to make a pad thai with ease and then it was our turn to step up... We all gathered round our stations, fired up the gas and then the instructions were shouted at us along with: “Faster faster faster! Cook with your emotion! No too much emotion!” It was fast paced and a hectic ride, especially as she had demonstrated a dish that neither of us were making.
We survived the first round and sat down to our stir frys. Harry made pad see uw – a wide noodle dish, and I made stir fried chicken with chilli and holy basil. Both were a huge success.
We went on to make papaya salad and spicy chicken salad, and spring rolls. The spring rolls were referred to as ‘baby’: “You make fat baby, you make long skinny baby, put baby in oil, baby out!” Very amusing, and the end result was incredibly good. We were shown how to make the presentation raise the spring roll from 10 baht to 100 baht (a diagonal chop and resting them on each other!) but I have to say Indy’s definitely topped the rest of ours.
Feeling quite full after our first 3 dishes, we got some free time to explore the farm. Everyone chose to either lie in a hammock or on a huge bean bag cushion, quite content with snoozing off the food coma, trying to make room for the remaining food.
Curry pastes were up next. The class of 10 had only chosen 2 different curries between us – massaman and khaw soi (the Chiang Mai curry). We stood at opposite sides of the table with a huge pestle and mortar per team, and were given all the ingredients for the paste to chop as small as we could before making it into a paste. An arduous process that Indy said could be done in a blender at home, “but not today – ha ha!” We set to work, banging and smashing the ingredients together for probably about 20 minutes before reaching the desired paste consistency. It was hard work and we were glad that we hadn’t opted for a curry that no one else was making or we would have been on our own!
From here, we moved on to dessert so that once the soup and curry were ready we could eat everything together. Harry went for mango and sticky rice, and I chose deep fried bananas which were definitely the star of the show. I made a batter out of 2 different kinds of flour, water, sesame seeds and sugar paste. I then had to slice the small banana length ways into thin strips before tossing it in the batter and deep frying. They were DELICIOUS. We placed our desserts under a protective basket on the table and moved on to the curry.
The vegetables were doled out and chopped again, and before we knew it we were back behind the woks cooking with the crazed energy that we had now become accustomed to. The oil was heated, the curry paste fried and some coconut cream added. In went the vegetables and the rest of the coconut milk and it was boiled quite aggressively for a while. The khaw soi curry is served with noodles instead of rice – you pour the curry over a big bowl of boiled noodles, and top it with deep fried crunchy noodles. A real winner. You then garnish with shallots, pickled cabbage, chilli oil and lime.
Finally we made the soup. I chose Tom Sam (a spicy chicken thing) and Harry chose Tom Yam (spicy prawn soup). Various herbs and aromatics thrown into a boiling pan of water and seasoned with fish sauce, sugar, lime etc. I’m not a huge fan of Thai soups and this was no different – especially since we had so much other food to eat, but it was interesting to know how it was made if nothing else! Once complete, we sat down to our feast with our classmates and all ate in silence as we were so impressed with how well we had done.
We were given a cookery book with all the recipes from the day in, as well as some handy hints for cooking back home and substitutions for certain Thai ingredients if we can’t get them at home. The day was a huge success and we certainly hope to remember how to create these delicious dishes once we get home... And we’re sure our friends and family do too!
