Thai food is delicious so one of the things we really wanted to do while here was take a cooking class. There are a ton to choose from so we just picked the one our guidebook recommended that also happened to have an office a block from our hostel which was convenient. Chiang Mai has so many classes, tours, and treks into the mountains and the water that you could spend weeks here doing different things every day, but I'm digressing again.
First, we went to the market and learned about the different kinds of rice (there are a lot) among other things. Then we drove out to the farm where the class was to take place and learned some about what they grow. This class seemed somewhat unique in that they take you out of the city to do the cooking which was nice, After our lessons in rice and herbs and vegetables, it was time to get down to business.
And of course the first order of business is cooking rice. However, as our teacher explained, it is 2015, and we use a rice cooker. She did explain how to do it on the stove as well for good measure.
Next it was time for curry paste. Mince your ingredients...
And then smash the crap out of them with a mortar and pestle until they are paste like.
Setting the curry paste aside we made some tom yum soup which is a classic Thai soup made with lemongrass, kaffir lime, chilis, a bunch of herbs and (the secret ingredient as we found out) a tamarind, chili, shrimp paste. We have no pictures of the process here, but enjoy Chrissy's finished product. It was really good. There are a lot of ingredients in it so it might be a pain to recreate exactly, but if we could get our hands on some of that tamarind chili paste we could get some good use out of it back home.
Here is Chrissy at her station ready to start on her curry.
And, lo and behold, here is her yellow curry...
And my red curry. These were really good but we could have added more chilis for more spice. The same goes for the tom yum as well. When you are not used to how spicy a certain number of chilis are going to be it is hard to guage. Still, they turned out well. Making curries from scratch is way too labor intensive though and not something I see us doing at home.
Our stír fries on the other hand were good and would be easy to recreate back home I think. I made chicken with basil and chilis and Chrissy made chicken with vegetables and cashew nuts.
After we devoured our curries and stir fries, it was time for dessert. This is mango and sticky rice, a popular dessert you can get at most of the markets. It is green because it has been flavored with pandan leaves. Those are mung bean seeds on top of the rice. A good dessert, but very sweet.
After dessert it was time for one more dish to bring home for later. Here I am learning how to fold spring rolls. The spring roll recipe was actually surprisingly easy and they came out really well.
Here's Chrissy hard at work making pad thai which has way to many ingredients for us to not just order it from our local Thai place when we are back home.
Behold our final dishes. We left with a nice recipe book and (as it turned out) dinner for that night.
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