Cooking class

Our teacher, Boom, with the dimples. She's squeezing freshly grated coconut, causing it to ooze coconut cream.
see all photos »

Today was the cooking class.  I was preparing for a negotiation battle with the cooking school folks to make sure that we did the intensive course with dishes that we wanted.  But it turns out that everything was more than okay and they were ridiculously well-run and nice.  Baan Thai Cooking School.  1200 baht for intensive course.

We made prawns and glass noodles in a clay pot, chicken wrapped in pandanus leaves, Chiang Mai noodles, red curry with duck, green curry with chicken, and coconut sticky rice with mangos.  We choose these items by combining things from their regular menu and their intensive menu.  I think we had a good balance of different types of dishes and different types of techniques.  We wanted the coconut sticky rice with mangos partially, possibly mostly, because we haven't been having good luck getting sticky rice elsewhere.

It was so delicious that we were talking about how we didn't need to go to restaurants here anymore.

Dragon fruit, pomello, and custard apples.
see all photos »

We started the day by going to the market and getting ingredients.  This was something that B and J really wanted to do and we previously weren't sure that this was included with the intensive course - maybe it's so intensive that there's no time to go to the market.  I actually learned a lot from this market outing - many different types of eggplant and ginger, I saw people making grated coconut and coconut milk... and I witnessed unusual business practices.  We stopped by a fruit stand and our teacher bought some fruit for the vendor.  After our teacher left, we stood there talking about and pointing to the various fruits.  The vendor, with no shame at all, flipped the sign for the rambutans from 15 baht to 18 baht.  Right in front of our faces.  Now that was silly... why would we buy something when we know we'd have to pay the higher price.

My "good Thai wife." They kept telling us to keep smiling so that we could cook delicious food and be "good Thai wives."
see all photos »

I'm glad we took the intensive course... we made our own coconut milk and curry paste.  The other classes just bought prepared coconut milk while we bought grated coconut to make into milk.  Mixing together and cooking ingredients is easy to do and learn, but the details of how to make curry paste were interesting... if you chop the ingredients really fine, it makes it so that you have an easier time with the pounding in the mortar and pestle.  Or maybe that's what they said so that they could judge and compare our various skills at chopping things really fine.

Chiang Mai noodles aka Kaew sawy.
see all photos »

Palm sugar - tasty!  I'll have to find some to bring back or find some in the US.  We used it in a sauce for the chicken in pandanus leaves.

It was also nice to have a "private" class with just M, B, J, and me.  Our teacher was Boom - which means dimples!  Maybe I'll start calling people with dimples "Boom."

We were so full by the end of the day!  So much delicious food.  It was so delicious that we were talking about how we didn't need to go to restaurants here anymore.  Though we still need to hit lots of street food places... we're going to try the Warorot market tomorrow, which was suggested by someone after I pointed to the name of the coconut round things that Christina mentioned.

Ingredients that went into the duck curry, besides coconut milk and red curry paste.
see all photos »

Another clever business practice that I admire - we wore these aprons with the name of the cooking school in large letters so all our photos (to be uploaded later) will be advertisements for their school.  I don't mind.  I highly recommend them.

We tried these various Thai sweets that we purchased from the market - Don't eat the white flower ones - they tasted like a cross between styrofoam and chalk.  Everything else was tasty though.