The day after we went trekking I decided to enroll myself in a cookery course. There are lots of them on offer but I decided to go for this one:
http://www.asiascenic.com/
Its just a half day course and located conveniently close by which is the main reason I picked it but it turns out to be a good choice. I'm picked up from our hotel at 4.30 and the course will run til 8pm. I meet some cool people who are also doing the course, 2 English lads, Australian couple and an Austrian couple (not to be confused- throw another schnitzel on the barbie!). They drop us off at the cooking school and we our met by our instructor Mam (not my Mam-its the girls name!). She welcomes us all in and is lovely and smiley.
First stop is the cute little herb garden out the back of the cooking school. She shows us the different herbs and spices that we will be using, and passes them around so that we can all smell them and get used to them. She goes through all the uses culinary and medicinal for them and its really interesting. Next she prepares a typical Thai welcome for us - crushed nuts, shaved coconut, whole chillies ,ginger and syrup (palm sugar maybe?) which you take and wrap up in a basil leaf like a little mini fajita! It looks really simple as we put it together but the flavour is amazing!
Next we all have to agree as a group 3 categories of food that we want to cook so we choose a curry,a stir fry and a soup. Then every person can individually choose what type of curry (i.e. red/green etc) they want to make and so on.We will all also cook noodles.
We head off to the market and learn about the other ingredients that we need to buy.
First of all we make our Pad Thai (A very common Thai dish fried noodles with chicken/shrimp etc.) We sit down and eat this straight away after we have cooked it. Now, I don't want to toot my own horn but..... toot toot toot! It was bloody delicious! (pic may not do it justice).
After that we head back to the chopping board and simultaneously make our soup/curry and stir fry. Tough work in the heat hence the sweaty red face! (and that's just me check out the sunburned head on yer man!)
When we're done chopping/crushing/stirring/frying- we sit down to an absolute feast. Its all so delicious everyone wants to eat it all but none of us can possibly manage so we have to settle for eating about a quarter of each dish, and try to force down a bit more too but its tough work!
As we were eating Mam presented us with our recipe-books and told us lots of things about the village where she's from and Thai culture in general. For example slagging off one of the English guys for the way he said thank you. (you say kop khun ka if you are a girl and kop khun krab if you're a boy) so in her giggly Thai way she tells him "ohhh haha you have to say krab or people gonna think you a lady-man!"
It was a great day out and definitely recommend it as something to do if anyone is in Thailand. And you get a great oul feed aswell, cant bate it!
http://www.asiascenic.com/
Its just a half day course and located conveniently close by which is the main reason I picked it but it turns out to be a good choice. I'm picked up from our hotel at 4.30 and the course will run til 8pm. I meet some cool people who are also doing the course, 2 English lads, Australian couple and an Austrian couple (not to be confused- throw another schnitzel on the barbie!). They drop us off at the cooking school and we our met by our instructor Mam (not my Mam-its the girls name!). She welcomes us all in and is lovely and smiley.
First stop is the cute little herb garden out the back of the cooking school. She shows us the different herbs and spices that we will be using, and passes them around so that we can all smell them and get used to them. She goes through all the uses culinary and medicinal for them and its really interesting. Next she prepares a typical Thai welcome for us - crushed nuts, shaved coconut, whole chillies ,ginger and syrup (palm sugar maybe?) which you take and wrap up in a basil leaf like a little mini fajita! It looks really simple as we put it together but the flavour is amazing!
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
Next we all have to agree as a group 3 categories of food that we want to cook so we choose a curry,a stir fry and a soup. Then every person can individually choose what type of curry (i.e. red/green etc) they want to make and so on.We will all also cook noodles.
We head off to the market and learn about the other ingredients that we need to buy.
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
First of all we make our Pad Thai (A very common Thai dish fried noodles with chicken/shrimp etc.) We sit down and eat this straight away after we have cooked it. Now, I don't want to toot my own horn but..... toot toot toot! It was bloody delicious! (pic may not do it justice).
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
After that we head back to the chopping board and simultaneously make our soup/curry and stir fry. Tough work in the heat hence the sweaty red face! (and that's just me check out the sunburned head on yer man!)
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
When we're done chopping/crushing/stirring/frying- we sit down to an absolute feast. Its all so delicious everyone wants to eat it all but none of us can possibly manage so we have to settle for eating about a quarter of each dish, and try to force down a bit more too but its tough work!
As we were eating Mam presented us with our recipe-books and told us lots of things about the village where she's from and Thai culture in general. For example slagging off one of the English guys for the way he said thank you. (you say kop khun ka if you are a girl and kop khun krab if you're a boy) so in her giggly Thai way she tells him "ohhh haha you have to say krab or people gonna think you a lady-man!"
It was a great day out and definitely recommend it as something to do if anyone is in Thailand. And you get a great oul feed aswell, cant bate it!
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
 |
| From Chiang Mai |
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