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Published: December 5th 2014
Nepali Cooking Course
Making Tibetan celebration breadFriday October 3rd
We were met this morning by Amrit from Nepali Cooking Course
http://www.nepalicookingcourse.com/ I'd been looking forward to today for months after searching for a good cooking class in Kathmandu and finding his course on Tripadvisor. We try and do a cooking class in every country we visit as not only are they fun but we normally learn some great tips and tricks and we love the interaction with the locals running them!
We walked to the local 'old' market and along the way picked up another 2 small groups of girls who we'd be spending the morning with. There is something about local food markets that I just love. The variety of beautiful, fresh produce always amazes me! This one was no exception. Set in the dusty streets alongside temples and gorgeous old newari buildings, we saw more varieties of mushrooms than I new existed, gorgeous chucks of salt with different hues (pink himalayan, black himalayan, grey rock), colourful flowers and vendors selling a gorgeous array of fruit from their pushbikes.
After wandering around for a while we headed to Amrit's house on the outskirts of Thamel. His home was a tiny place where we
Morning market
Gorgeous fresh spices walked up about 5 flights of rickety stairs ducking under the tiny doorways. They normally shared the 'house' with a few other families however they had all gone back to their villages to celebrate Dashain (today was the main day of celebration!).
We all sat around a tiny table sipping delicious masala tea whilst Amrit introduced us to his daughter (18?) Anu who would be teaching us the dishes. We had an awesome time making momos (nepali style steamed veg dumplings), Dal Bhat (rice, veg curry, greens, dal and pickle), rice pudding and tibetan celebration bread. As it was the day of the festival, the family also cooked a delicious chicken curry for us. We were also presented with a special plate of food as part of the festivities which we ate before eating our meal - banana, yogurt and something like rice flakes that you mix together and eat with your hand (right hand of course) in the traditional style. A lot of fun!
All in all we had a fantastic morning and if you are every in Kathmandu I highly suggest you go along and meet Amrit and his beautiful family!
Later in the afternoon
(after a nice nanna nap for Mia and I) we all headed out for a walk to Swayumbinath (monkey temple), another popular hindi temple located about an hours walk from Thamel set on a hill overlooking the Kathmandu valley. Gav & I had already visited here numerous times but never get sick of the walk or the view!
Tomorrow we'll be heading to Pokhara to get organised for our trek. We decided we'd fly this time (30mins) rather than catch the 6-10 hour local bus. We did the bus trip the first time we trekked years ago and although it was awesome we couldn't be bothered spending the whole day travelling. Lucky as we later found out that no buses were running due to the festival!
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