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Published: October 8th 2005
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Boom
One of our lovely teachers Today brings more cooking lessons, like I need them!
Well actually there are some of you that will be glad I did, Phad Thai was on todays schedule, along with fish cakes, tom yam soup (hot and sour with prawns), green curry, chicken salad and a water chestnut desert which is much nicer than it sounds.
We switched cooking stations today and Kev got a decent burner, I however nearly set alight to my hands twice, thank god for asbestos fingers! We started out with a tour of thai ingredients, which herbs are the best to use and what to use as alternatives. We started out with the Tom Yam, Kev's favourite. It's blisteringly hot, uses a copious amount of birds eye chilli but it's fragrant and refreshing at the same time. The rest of the class decide that one birds eye chilli is plenty, Kev on the other hand adds seven! Roong (one of the lovely teachers), is very impressed, 'It's like my soup!' she declares. Kev takes away his lovely soup to the table but is caught out by a rogue piece of chilli, it gets stuck in his throat and brings tears to his eyes, everyone is impressed
Kev's tom yam soup
The hottest soup in the world and he spends the next ten minutes coughing and spluttering and is a lovely red hue. Our next lesson is fish cakes, these are relatively easy and just a matter of combining the ingredients so they're not too wet or too dry. Roong fries them off for everyone and I now swear, that I won't be buying them in bulk from the supermarket as they apparently freeze really well, oh well there goes another 10lbs when I get home!
We move swiftly on to Green curry, one of the most popular dishes. There's more Generation Game style explanation and we all go off to try it ourselves with varying degrees of success throughout the group. There is something puzzling me though, why would you pay for a thai cookery course, when you have no desire to actually cook or eat your food? I refer again to Team America, who I have discovered, don't like chilli, prawns, pork, fish sauce or cooking.
Very insipid looking curries keep arriving at our table, they then moan about how much stuff there is to eat! I really don't get it.
Pad Thai follows, this time with tofu. We learn that the ingredient that makes
Kev's fish cakes
I got to eat the deformed one Pad Thai so distinctive is also a laxative, too much Pad Thai and you'll be running for the loo. The last two dishes are less inspiring, or maybe it's just that we've stuffed ourselves stupid and the thought of cooking and eating again is less appealing.
We struggle on and knock up a quick chicken salad (not a hint of lettuce or cesar dressing in sight!) and a ruby red (Kev's hands are still covered in food colouring) water chestnut desert in coconut cream. Both were delicious but I neglected to take photos!
We spot some cheap guitars on the way back to Chang Mai, Kev's going to check them out before we leave as they seem too cheap to be true. I have more practical things on my mind and take a weeks laundry to the local launderette, you just hand it over, cough up a quid and the nice lady will give it back tomorrow, washed, ironed and folded ready to go into the suitcase.
We spent this evening wandering down Changklang Road, once again looking for some bargains. I've got my eye on some nice fishermans trousers and stall holders keep trying to flog Kev 'designer' watches.
Kev's Pad Thai & Green Curry
It's only taken me 12 years and six thousand miles to make him cook dinner!
They taste as nice as they look too. I think we'll save the shopping until Sunday night when there are a couple of markets selling local tribal goodies.
We're off back to the hotel now, with a possible detour to Mike's New York hot dog stand, who apparently have been 'converting vegetarians since 1979'. I wonder what crap film will be on tonight, we have so far endured bits of Rosemary's Baby (by far the best movie), Hudson Hawk (I had to turn this off), Crimson Tide (I fell asleep), Ace Ventura (NO!), a Metallica Documentary (busmans holiday!), plus assorted other rubbish. I flick over to MTV asia but can't stand more than one song of the Thai version of Good Charlotte (Nich, I've takend photos just for you!). They seem to show lots of films that have people that we recognise but have no fucking idea what the film is ie. Steven Segal (all his movies are crap), Jackie Chan (not in English), Chris O'Donnel (not Batman unfortunately). The killer is, you get an ad break every ten minutes and the breaks last ten minutes, it's not surprising that I fall asleep, you start watching something at 10.30 and at midnight you're only half way through.
Kev cooks!
Move over Jamie Oliver, this kitchen ain't big enough for the both of you. More cooking tomorrow...
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