We’re excited – we finally get to meet Yui and go to her Cooking School. We had planned this school the first time we were in Chiang Mai, but ended up doing another one. So today – finally A Lot of Thai!
Yui is a self taught chef who has been running the school for over 10 years now, and had a restaurant for a while as well. She went to school for public administration, but found she wasn’t really cut out for an office job. She loves to eat, so cooking is a natural extension of her desire to find good, nutritious and properly prepared food. She’s been on Thai cooking shows and has also been on a TV show with Gordon Ramsey. Her husband Kwan works with her as driver, graphic designer (the cook book we get as part of our schooling is an incredible piece of artwork along with a great recipe and reference guide – the design is really fabulous!), and general all around partner. They both come to pick us up in their blue VW bus – there are already 2 other couples in the bus – both in their early 20’s and traveling for extended periods. An Irish couple who have been traveling since July (and won’t return home until June!!!), and a couple from New York city who are traveling around SE Asia for a month. Great company for our little school, as it turns out as the day goes on. Our last student is an Aussie who is here on a 50th birthday trip. Good gang.
We putter our way through neighborhoods and streets – getting thoroughly confused as to where we are – when we finally pull up to Yui and Kwan’s house where we will have our lessons. The “kitchen” is basically in the carport – with 8 cooking stations plus Yui’s “teaching” station – and a table for us to sample our creations.
We get started right away with our first dish – Pad Thai. Yui is a great instructor, very knowledgeable about Thai foods and how to prepare things just right. She passes on great tips and hints about everything – cooking garlic, making authentic Thai food, what the tastes should be, how hot the oil should be (by “feel”, not by thermometer). All sorts of useful information which we hope we will retain! She’s got a great personality and lots of fun little stories and anecdotes.
We all create our Pad Thai masterfully and sit down to feast on our breakfast creations.
Next up is Tom Yam Kung soup – the hot and sour soup (this one with prawns) that Ed loves so. It’s sinfully simple, boil water, throw in ingredients. Everything is simple – if you know what you need and how to do it. It’s barely 11am and already we’re eating our 2nd dish. And we’ve got 4 more to go!
Next, we move up to the curries. Yui gives us a full explanation of how the curries are made, the heat, what to look for and of course- how to cook it all. She makes green curry for us to sample – her favorite. As we move back to our stations, we decide to do red curry together because we know we can’t eat it all and this way we can combine the leftovers for take home! This is totally fun – the woks, the method of cooking, Yui walking around correcting, adding, giving advice and generally cheering us on. And everything turns out so wonderfully good – not a bad batch in the house!
Now it’s on to spring rolls – these are a little tougher – but in the end? It’s all so easy. cooking the veggies and noodles, letting them cool, wrapping them in the wrapper and then even frying them is simple as pie. No splashes, no mess with the oil. I really wish we could do this at home –and maybe we can. Except for the electric burner thing…well…hey….it’s not that tough really!
Now that we’re entirely stuffed – it’s off to the market! By going in the afternoon, we avoid the other cooking schools and have the place to ourselves. Yui gives us a lesson on just about every piece of produce ad condiment there. From eggplants, pea eggplants (they have so many eggplant varieties, it’s amazing), chinese kale, tamarind, bamboo shoots, rice (she uses black and red rice to add nutrition – we are so hoping we can find some when we get home!), fish oil – you name it – she shows us, makes us smell it, and gives us a lesson on what it’s used for and how to use it. They even had fresh baby corns!! I’ve never seen them fresh – just picked. How wild! We also get to taste “real” rose apples – grown in the vendors front yard – they are totally and completely different form the rose apples we had in Bangkok. More sour and definitely smell much more like a rose. Yum!
Then we stop for a refreshing drink – a lime shake. Out of the bag! Finally we are drinking out of the bag like every other Thai person we’ve seen the past week! This thing is awesome – it’s just lime juice and crushed ice, but its so refreshing and good. Not too tart and not sweet at all. Definitely something we’re trying when we get home!
Back we go to Yui’s house for our final recipes: Sweet sticky rice with mangoes and chicken with cashews. Both are – again – strikingly simple and so tasty. And the mangoes! I didn’t even think I liked mangoes, but in combination with the sweet sticky rice – they just melt in your mouth and refresh your palate with the fruity taste against the cloying sweetness of the rice. Yum!
It’s after 5 – and we are all so stuffed. It’s been a great day – a wonderful learning experience – and we’ve got food for tomorrow! Great way to spend a day! We all pile back into the bus for the drive home – with Yui pointing out favorite restaurants and shops along the way. One of her favorite shops is right by our condo – where we can buy fermented pork sausages wrapped in banana leaves that are Yui’s favorite (we saw the fermented sausages in the market where we remarked on them – and the Irish couple had sampled them at a restaurant near their hotel). That’s our dinner for sure!
We say goodbye to Yui and Kwan – wishing them the best – and wishing we had gone to their school the first time we were here – instead of just once now! That’s what a great experience this was!
After relaxing a bit on the deck and watching a beautiful sunset behind the mountains
we head to the little store to buy our sausage. We get 2 types (but we don’t know what they are!!!) and some rice crackers – all for 95b or about $3US. Dinner! Because we are so stuffed we are not eating anything else.
The sausage is really good – it’s weird, not what we expected- we expected something harder and more dense. It’s actually got a soft texture, almost a tofu sort of feel, but good spices and taste. It reminds us of something – we’re just not sure what!
So, we sit and nibble, drinking our beer and wine and just relax and hang out the rest of the night in the condo. Nice day, nice night in Chiang Mai.
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