Advertisement
Published: September 20th 2011
Edit Blog Post
A lot of people have been asking for my next blog entry so my apologies, but I needed to do something to actually write about. 😊 I'm sure some of you may find my daily train ride home from work exciting, but I'm sure most of you want something with a little more substance. Hopefully my first Thai cooking class experience is worth the read because it sure was worth attending.
Thai cooking classes are very popular here so when a friend booked a class for about 11 of us I jumped a the chance to join in. The Baipai Thai Cooking School is located on the outskirts of Bangkok near the last skytrain stop and overall it was some of the most fun I've had in a while. The cost was about $55 and it included pickup, dropoff, recipes to take home and of course you got to eat what you cooked. The building itself was beautiful and it looked more like a large, Bali style house instead of a school. The grounds themselves were beautiful complete with gardens, little koi ponds and open air patios and dining areas.
When we first got there they gave us a
quick overview of the school and the 4 dishes we would be cooking.
1. Som tam ma-la-kor - papaya salad.
2. Tom yam goong - hot and sour prawn soup.
3. Gai pad med ma-muang - stir fried chicken with cashew nuts.
4. Pa-nang gai - curry pa-nang chicken.
I hadn't had lunch and I was STARVING so I couldn't wait to dive in. We got our aprons and towel and then walked down to the kitchen. The way it worked is that we had two instructors and they would demonstrate the dish, let us sample it, then we cook it ourselves and we eat it. Straight forward, simple - I like it! Our two instructors were very cool and they had a great sense of humour, even cracking jokes along the way which was very entertaining.
The first dish was the papaya salad and the key ingredients were the young papaya of course, lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and of course hot chilies. This one was pretty simple because all you had to do was cut the papaya into strips, cut up the other vegetables, make the sauce and combine. We used a young green
papaya and the consistency was the same as a potato, different from the ripe papaya that we're used to. This was my first experience using the traditional Thai mortar and pestle and it was pretty neat. We used it for all the dishes and for the salad it was used to ground up the chilies, garlic and peanuts. It's a good alternative to just cutting things up and it really releases the flavour in some of the spices as well as the heat in the chili peppers. I found that Thai cooking isn't that complicated and there aren't any long cooking processes, but the keys are prepping all the ingredients and using all fresh spices and vegetables. They also used gas ranges and brass cookware, so everything heated up instantly, and if you didn't have all of your ingredients ready to go then things would burn for sure and the dish would be ruined. The other key to Thai cooking is how spicy you want your dish. For my salad I put two chilis and I could feel the heat for sure. One of our instructors didn't like it too hot, but the other one said she would put 5
or 6 - that's insane! Anyways, it was a very tasty salad and now we were on to the soup.
The keys to this dish are the galangal and the lemongrass. If you've ever been to a spa then you know what lemongrass smells like - fairly strong and sweet. The lemongrass is pounded in the mortar just enough to release the flavour and it's put in the saucepan with chicken broth and brought to a boil. Galangal has a consistency similar to a potato but it has a very sweet aroma to it, similar to lemongrass. The other key to a lot of Thai dishes is cane sugar which has an unbelievable flavour to it. It's very strong so you can't add too much or else it's hard to correct. I like things sweet so I definitely put more in than everyone else. 😉 Other ingredients such as lime juice, fish sauce, thai chili flakes and Kaffir lime leaves are added, brought to a boil and the soup is ready. I used two hot chilies in this dish and it was the perfect amount of heat for me, but some others added up to 6 - too much
for me.
The next dish was the stir fried chicken with cashew nuts and it amazed me how easy and quick this one was. It started with deep frying little strips of chicken and I couldn't believe how quick this was - about 10 seconds in the oil. The next step was to stir fry onions and peppers and to add chicken stock. After this was done we added thai chili paste, oyster sauce and palm sugar and last we added the chicken, dried chili peppers and cashew nuts. Simple, easy - tasty.
The last dish we cooked was the pa-nang curry chicken and it was by far the most delicious thing on the menu. The most involved and difficult step was preparing the pa-nang curry paste and it was definitely worth the effort. The entire paste was made in the mortar and the key was to grind everything up until it was completely mixed together, which took quite a lot of pounding. First we added chili peppers (two for me) and salt and pounded until it was a paste. Then we added lemon grass, galangal, and kaffir lime rind and pounded again until it was a paste,
which took about 5 or 6 minutes. Next we added coriander root, shallots and garlic and pounded again until it was a paste. Then we added star anise, coriander seeds, cumin powder and pepper seeds and again made it into a paste. Lastly shrimp paste was added and ground up with the rest of the ingredients. I had no idea curry paste took so much work but after smelling the finished product I could tell it would be worth it. The only time I've seen the actual curry paste was in the little packets at the grocery store but with all these fresh ingredients there is no comparison as far as quality.
Once the paste was done we went to our stations where they had woks set up and we started by bringing coconut cream to a boil. Next we added the pa-nang curry paste and stirred until it was blended. I can't tell you how good this smelled, especially considering how hungry I was! Next we added the chicken, followed by peanuts, fish sauce and palm sugar and stirred until it was blended through. Last we added kaffir lime leaf, red chili, basil and stirred until it was
blended. By this time I was dripping saliva into this curry it smelled so good. Everyone took their dishes upstairs where they brought out jasmine rice and we all ate together at a big dinner table. This was one of the tastiest Thai dishes I've ever had and it tasted exactly like something you would pay for at any restaurant. It took some time and effort but well worth it. By this time we all had a few beers so as you can see I forgot to take pictures of the last two dishes but I did include pictures of the recipes they provided so you can try them at home if you want. Overall this was some of the most fun I've had in an afternoon and I highly recommend it if you're ever in Thailand. I hope you enjoyed it - until next time!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0239s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pete
non-member comment
CHEF GIBBY
I guess the next poker night will feature some of these dishes.