Saturday, December 02, 2006
Cooking Thai style in Chiang Mai
Today, I completed a Thai cooking course in Chiang Mai which was great fun. The course was given by a company called Smart Cook and was attended by myself and an American woman named Vicky who has been living in Paris for 23 years.
First off, we hit a local Thai market to buy all of the ingredients fresh. Our teacher, Cocoa, showed us all kinds of different herbs, vegetables and fruits and explained the different kinds of rice as well as curry pastes (green vs. red) and tofus (plain vs. with tumeric). She explained that the Thai use the small chilis in their cooking a lot: green is not as strong as the red version. She also showed us about five different types of eggplant/aubergine and mushrooms I've never seen before such as "Mickey Mouse" (a type of jelly-like mushroom) and oyster mushrooms. We also wandered around and met some of the woman who have stalls in the market.
We cooked the following:
- Pad Thai (Thai noodles)
- fried spring rolls
- Tom Kha Kai (coconut soup with chicken)
- hot and sour chicken soup
- green curry with chicken
- penang curry (red with chicken)
- fried chicken with cashew nuts
- sweet sticky rice with coconut milk and mango
I discovered that Thai food is easy and very quick to make, if you have the right ingredients. The basic Thai ingredients are oyster sauce, fermented fish sauce, sugar, chilis, sweet Thai basil and coriander and then the rest basically varies according to the vegetables that you want to use.
We rolled out of there as we ate everything we made. (Luckily, I didn't eat breakfast!) I've had everything we made already except the dessert sweet sticky rice which was delicious. For those of you who've never tried it, sticky rice is sticky, chewy and more dense than parboiled rice which is puffed out. Basically, sticky rice is a special kind of rice which is soaked for 12 hours and then steamed. To make the dessert version, you need to boil coconut cream with white sugar and a dash of salt and then to add already prepared sticky rice. The mixture is cooked until all of the liquid is dissolved into the rice which gives it a lovely flavour. The rice we made today was served with the most amazing mango. I buy mango a lot in Amsterdam but none of them tastes anything like the mangos over here.
It was really an enjoyable day made very special by the young women who were so kind and patient.
I'm in a very mellow mood, probably brought on by today's feast. I'm off to the pool to swim a few laps and then will take another Thai massage. On Monday, I fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia and will tour Angkor Wat after which I will head overland to Phnom Penh, the capital.
First off, we hit a local Thai market to buy all of the ingredients fresh. Our teacher, Cocoa, showed us all kinds of different herbs, vegetables and fruits and explained the different kinds of rice as well as curry pastes (green vs. red) and tofus (plain vs. with tumeric). She explained that the Thai use the small chilis in their cooking a lot: green is not as strong as the red version. She also showed us about five different types of eggplant/aubergine and mushrooms I've never seen before such as "Mickey Mouse" (a type of jelly-like mushroom) and oyster mushrooms. We also wandered around and met some of the woman who have stalls in the market.
We cooked the following:
- Pad Thai (Thai noodles)
- fried spring rolls
- Tom Kha Kai (coconut soup with chicken)
- hot and sour chicken soup
- green curry with chicken
- penang curry (red with chicken)
- fried chicken with cashew nuts
- sweet sticky rice with coconut milk and mango
I discovered that Thai food is easy and very quick to make, if you have the right ingredients. The basic Thai ingredients are oyster sauce, fermented fish sauce, sugar, chilis, sweet Thai basil and coriander and then the rest basically varies according to the vegetables that you want to use.
We rolled out of there as we ate everything we made. (Luckily, I didn't eat breakfast!) I've had everything we made already except the dessert sweet sticky rice which was delicious. For those of you who've never tried it, sticky rice is sticky, chewy and more dense than parboiled rice which is puffed out. Basically, sticky rice is a special kind of rice which is soaked for 12 hours and then steamed. To make the dessert version, you need to boil coconut cream with white sugar and a dash of salt and then to add already prepared sticky rice. The mixture is cooked until all of the liquid is dissolved into the rice which gives it a lovely flavour. The rice we made today was served with the most amazing mango. I buy mango a lot in Amsterdam but none of them tastes anything like the mangos over here.
It was really an enjoyable day made very special by the young women who were so kind and patient.
I'm in a very mellow mood, probably brought on by today's feast. I'm off to the pool to swim a few laps and then will take another Thai massage. On Monday, I fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia and will tour Angkor Wat after which I will head overland to Phnom Penh, the capital.
