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We had really wanted to take a cooking class while we were here. We made reservations with BaiPai cooking school in advance. They offer a choice of five different menus, each offered on different days and the menu today involved curry. With Lisa's dislike for spicy food and Jeff's love of them, the cooking class seemed like it would be useful since we could learn how to make dished that we can adjust the amount of spice in. The cooking school price included round trip transportation from your hotel, so we didn't even have to fight with a taxi!
We arrived and were greeted with cold tea to drink while we filled out registrations forms. We also got recipe cards for everything that we would be making in class. Those had a spot for notes on them. Next we got aprons and towels and headed to the cooking area. The class size is limited to 10 people and they have 10 seats around the demo area and 10 cooking stations. First we saw a demo on how to make curry paste. We were both happy to learn that it is easy to adjust how spicy you want curry to be. Next we watched how to prepare egg custard and then we all got to do the prep work on our own. They label them with your number so that you get to eat your own food. They took the custard away to steam it and we moved onto the next dish.
We watched them make the filling for spring rolls and roll them, and then it was our turn to try it. We each went to our stations with a wok and a burner. All the ingredients were already chopped and measured out. Cooking is easy this way! Once everything was nicely cooked, came the challenging part of rolling the spring roll up. The teacher makes it look easy! Next came a demo of how to fry them, followed by each of us frying ours. Jeff was afraid that one of his was going to fall apart when he put it in, but all of ours stayed together. We artfully displayed our spring rolls and then came the best part, we got to eat them!
The next course was Spicy Beef Salad. I made mine non-spicy though. :) We made, displayed, and then ate. Finally we did the main course, chicken curry. We had to use the (spicy) curry paste that the instructor had prepared earlier, so I wasn't able to make mine non-spicy enough for my taste, but I know how to do it at home now! We all ate our curry with rice upstairs and were able to talk to other people in the class. Jeff wasn't even the only guy in the class! It was a highlight of our trip, and I would recommend a cooking school to anyone visiting. The better ones (like this one) have one cooking station per student, so you get to do everything yourself, not as a group.
We laid by the pool in the afternoon. The pool is very nice at the hotel, but it only gets sun in the morning because of all the tall buildings. It is still quite nice out there in the shade though. We decided that Asian food sounded good for dinner, so we headed to one of the hotel restaurants, Eating Rice, Drinking Tea. We did just that! We decided on Sushi, so we sat at the Sushi bar. At the end of our meal, we learned that fresh fish gets flown in on Tuesday and Friday, so those are the best days to eat there. Of course we choose a Thursday! Jeff ate all kinds of raw fish, while I stuck with the cooked stuff. They had an impressive Sake selection, and Jeff tried a few different kinds. I had tea, and this is the first restaurant that I have eaten at in a long time where I wanted them to quit refilling my tea! It was very tasty, but very hot. Every time it cooled to just the right temperature, they came by and topped it off! I told Jeff that my mom would love it, as she wants her tea very hot. We skipped desert and headed to bed.
previous travel blog entry
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