Siam Rice

Siam Rice

We were also able to see the machines used to make coconut cream and cocounut milk in action.

We then headed to the school where we were each able to choose a different dish in each of six categories to make: soup, appetizer, noodles, vegetables, curry, and dessert.  We each chose different dishes in each category to maximize our cooking experience and how many dishes we'd be able to try.  All day long, we ATE! And then we would eat some more.  Our instructor Sim's favorite phrase was "eating time."  It was gluttonous and over-indulgent and completely delicious.

 

We were both interested to find that most Thai dishes start with a similar base of flavor consisting of shallots, ginger, chiles, and usually coconut milk and soy and oyster sauces.  The employees at the school were incredibly efficient and organized, and always had the dishes prepared for each person's choice.  Our teacher was amazing and could keep track of each dish everyone was making and when to add this or mix that.  Not a single dish was burned.  I can't even keep track of 2 dishes of my own at home!

Our first dish was soup.  I chose the chicken and coconut soup (Tom Gai) and Jon opted for the Hot and Creamy soup.  Both were delish!



Tom Gai (left), hot and creamy (right)

Next up was the noodle dish.  I learned to make the traditional Thai dish of Pad Thai and Jon made glass noodles with chicken.

Pad Thai

Glass noodles

By now I was incredibly full and hadn't finished either of my dishes, but it was time to make curry paste.  It was so intriguing to learn what went into this very important Asian ingredient.  We used a mortar and pestle to combine chillies, shallots, garlic, thai ginger, lemongrass, shrimp paste, lime peel, coriander and tumeric, adding different spices for each type of curry we would be making.  I was making Panang and Jon chose the Jungle curry, which is the spiciest (go figure).  Most Thais add about 10 chiles to this mouth-watering dish; my husband added 24!  I thought there would be steam coming from his ears, but he ate most of it like a champ.

Jungle Curry

After the curry, we had a short break and a vegetable carving lesson.  Our teacher taught us to carve a flower out of a carrot.  Can you guess which is mine, Jon's, and our teacher's?

Shortly afterwards, it was back to cooking (and more eating).  We each made a vegetable dish with chicken.  Jon made cashew chicken and I chose fried ginger and chicken.

Next up was the appetizer course, which seemed a bit out of order but was yum-o none the less. Jon perfected wrapping up a spring roll and wok-frying it, while I made papaya salad.  I had tried the spicy papaya salad in Kanchanaburi and dislike it because of its strong fish sauce flavor, but now that I was able to control what was put into it, I loved it!

Last on the menu was dessert.  Jon made sticky rice with mango, probably my favorite dessert here in Thailand, and this was the best yet.  I made bananas in thick coconut milk, also very delicious.

Overall, it was a fun and busy day.  We both enjoyed our instructor and the food and will hopefully bring this skill home with us (especially since we have gotten spoiled by CHEAP Thai food and it's quite expensive at home). Asian markets, here we come!

We were both uncomfortably full, so headed back to the guesthouse and napped, relaxed, and
packed for our trek the next day.One of my most favorite things from our Europe trip was our cooking course in Italy, so I insisted we do something similar here in Thailand.  Jon and I signed up for the Siam Rice Cooking School; we were picked up early from our guesthouse and our first stop was a local market.  We had been to plenty of markets, but our teacher was able to show us all the fresh ingredients we'd be using during the day: lemongrass, kaffir limes, fresh peppercorns, Thai ginger,hot basil, many types of eggplant.