Cooking up a storm!

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After weeks and weeks of eating some of the best food on the earth, we finally got our chance to get our hands dirty and cook up some grub for ourselves! Our cooking class began with a trip to the local market, where our teacher took us around and explained all the ingredients while she bought the items for the day. We watch the vendors turn coconuts into coconut powder and milk, the butchers cut pieces of beef and chicken from large blocks of meat, and countless spices, veggies and tofu. We saw from ear mushrooms that are quite disgusting looking, and learned about all the different forms of tofu and why they colour it yellow (with saffron) - which is to give some colour in bland coloured dishes, such as pad thai!

Each student in the class could choose 6 different dishes from a list, so Meg, Kyle, Mike and I each chose different dishes to sample just about everything! Included in our dishes was pad thai, yellow and red curry paste, spicy papaya salad, cashew chicken stirfry, vegetable spring rolls, stuffed cucumber soup and steamed fish in banana leaves. And what chefs we are!! We are allowed to eat our dishes when we finish them and by the end of the day I don't think I have ever had so much delicious food in one day!

We get to make the curry paste from scratch, including grinding the spices with a mortar and pestle. This was the most any of the dishes involved doing, as for most of the rest of the dishes, the meat and stuff was already prepared for us. We mainly just chopped veggies and the rest was given to us ready, but for a non-cook like me, this was perfect! We did get to take home a cook book with all the recipes from the day in it!

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