Today I spent my day learning how to cook Thai food at one of the cooking schools in Chiang Mai called Baan Thai. In total, there were 8 students: myself, couples from NYC and France, a girl from Germany, and two men from Canada and Belgium. It was awesome hearing everyone’s travel plans since most of the group was traveling for several months and just going where they wanted to go along the way without a set plan (apparently in Belgium once you work somewhere 5 years, you get to take one year off and get paid a portion of your salary by the government for that year...mental note, move to Belgium).
Our morning started with a tour of the local market where we learned about some of the different key ingredients used in Thai cooking such as palm oil. We also got all the fresh items we needed for our meals.
Back at the cooking school, we started the first of five courses, which was a stir-fried dish (I made pad thai). Everything was so well set-up and we each had our own work stations and burners. We were able to choose between three dishes for each category, but I got to try almost everything since we shared everything with each other. Next was the appetizer (papaya salad or som tam), then soup (chicken in coconut milk or tom kaa gai), then curry (Chiang Mai noodle with chicken or kao soy) and finally dessert (deep fried banana or gluay thod).
To say I was full after a day of cooking would have been an understatement. Although some of the ingredients will be difficult to get in the US (for example, their papayas are more like giant cucumbers), I am looking forward to combing some of the local Asian markets to see what I can find and at least adapting some of the ideas and methods I learned today into my cooking!
