Cooking is a messy art. Although there are many famous family recipes with exact quantities and combinations of ingredients, I believe you have to have a sense of creativity and the courage to take risks to be a real master chef. That's why I'm always happy to be the cook if someone else wants to clean up after the meal!
This past Saturday, we took a Thai cooking course at a local organic farm in Chiang Mai. Along with six other eager students (comprised of three European couples), we visited a local market to gather the necessary ingredients and then spent some time wandering the garden of the organic farm, sniffing various spicy herbs and sour fruit rinds until the insides of our noses felt raw. After becoming acquainted with our own personal cooking station, the class began. Our teacher was a tiny little Thai woman named Sue who could slice scallions and pound peanuts with a speed that suggested she was quite experienced in Thai culinary arts (and maybe quite hungry as well).
Our first challenge of the day was making either green, yellow, or red curry paste. The advantage of being able to make our own curry was being able to monitor the level of spice, based on the number of chilli peppers and especially their little white seeds that we added. While we pounded cumin, lemongrass, green chilli, corriander, garlic, and onion into our mortar, Sue walked around to each station giving helpful hints such as, "More!" or "Pound harder!" or "Okay, you done."
My host brother in the Galapagos would always tell me that a meal was not complete unless it included la sopa. He would have been pleased that our second course of the day was simmering a pot of creamy coconut soup or in my case, sweet, spicy, sour Tom Yam shrimp soup. As I added veggies and herbs to my bubbling pot, Sue came around to my station, chopped the head off one of my gray, lifeless shrimps and threw just the head--the body comes later-- into the pot. "For color and flavor," she announced as I watched as my pot turned bright orange, "But you be careful when you eat, their eyes will be watching you!"
We added our soups to our other two courses of curry and spicy green papaya salad, and sat down to eat. Our empty stomachs growled and for the first few moments, a silence passed over the nine of us as we munched and crunched and savored our masterpieces. Even the Brit who called himself a notoriously bad "Napoleon Chef," seemed impressed with the success of his personal mixture of flavors and tastes. Then we began trading dishes and swapping curry flavors until everyone was so full we had to get up and take a walk around the beautiful organic farm.
When we returned, Sue told us to find our woks! Now we would learn how to fry Pad Thai or roll and deep-fry veggie spring rolls. Luckily, we were allowed to take this food home. While the others were watching the steam rise from their woks, I struggled to roll my spring rolls without letting the paper-thin wrap break and then sealing them up with scrambled egg juice. In the end, they were a greasy success and a perfect snack for later in the evening.
The grand finale of our day of cooking was learning the secret behind a Thai dessert: Sweet coconut cream or milk. Sara boiled banana slices into sugary coconut milk, while Erin and I prepared Khao Niauw Mamooung, more popularly referred to as Mango Sticky Rice! We dished out our sticky rice from the bamboo steamer, mixed in sweet coconut cream, and tossed in the sweet, fresh, heavenly mango. One bite and I had decided the simplest dish was my favorite.
At the end of the day, as we climbed back into our Song Tao (truck taxi), almost forgetting the entire bag of leftover food we had prepared, we felt a wave of great confidence fall over the group. Our arm muscles were tired from the slicing and pounding, our fingers were sticky from the rice and sugar, and our upper lips were tingling from the chilli juice, but we had worked hard to nourish our bodies. We had learned to make five traditional Thai delights in one day and even have a recipe book from the course in case our memory fails us.
Better be hungry when we arrive home!
My host brother in the Galapagos would always tell me that a meal was not complete unless it included la sopa. He would have been pleased that our second course of the day was simmering a pot of creamy coconut soup or in my case, sweet, spicy, sour Tom Yam shrimp soup. As I added veggies and herbs to my bubbling pot, Sue came around to my station, chopped the head off one of my gray, lifeless shrimps and threw just the head--the body comes later-- into the pot. "For color and flavor," she announced as I watched as my pot turned bright orange, "But you be careful when you eat, their eyes will be watching you!"
We added our soups to our other two courses of curry and spicy green papaya salad, and sat down to eat. Our empty stomachs growled and for the first few moments, a silence passed over the nine of us as we munched and crunched and savored our masterpieces. Even the Brit who called himself a notoriously bad "Napoleon Chef," seemed impressed with the success of his personal mixture of flavors and tastes. Then we began trading dishes and swapping curry flavors until everyone was so full we had to get up and take a walk around the beautiful organic farm.
When we returned, Sue told us to find our woks! Now we would learn how to fry Pad Thai or roll and deep-fry veggie spring rolls. Luckily, we were allowed to take this food home. While the others were watching the steam rise from their woks, I struggled to roll my spring rolls without letting the paper-thin wrap break and then sealing them up with scrambled egg juice. In the end, they were a greasy success and a perfect snack for later in the evening.
The grand finale of our day of cooking was learning the secret behind a Thai dessert: Sweet coconut cream or milk. Sara boiled banana slices into sugary coconut milk, while Erin and I prepared Khao Niauw Mamooung, more popularly referred to as Mango Sticky Rice! We dished out our sticky rice from the bamboo steamer, mixed in sweet coconut cream, and tossed in the sweet, fresh, heavenly mango. One bite and I had decided the simplest dish was my favorite.
At the end of the day, as we climbed back into our Song Tao (truck taxi), almost forgetting the entire bag of leftover food we had prepared, we felt a wave of great confidence fall over the group. Our arm muscles were tired from the slicing and pounding, our fingers were sticky from the rice and sugar, and our upper lips were tingling from the chilli juice, but we had worked hard to nourish our bodies. We had learned to make five traditional Thai delights in one day and even have a recipe book from the course in case our memory fails us.
Better be hungry when we arrive home!
Photographer's Note: Sorry about the lack of photos, but we will add some soon when we get back to Bangkok!
2 comments:
Yum - makes me hungry for curry all over again. Great description of the day!!!
I loved reading this as soon as I got home from Greece. I think this will be your Aunt Bev's favorite entry when she gets home from Italy. Keep on writing. This is such a good way to share. Love, Momma
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