cooking school

this weekend i took 2 cooking courses. if you are ever in bangkok and in need of a cooking school, i highly recommend Silom Thai Cooking School. its owned/taught buy nusi, who is a very nice thai man who started a master's degree in ecology but decided he liked cooking better. who can blame him? not that i've been to other cooking schools (there are many in bangkok), but i imagine the others to be much more institutionalized. this was more like if i went over to your house and you showed me how to cook something. the classes were small, too--6 on saturday and 3 on sunday. the cooking school is actually in his apartment building, on the top floor. we cooked out on the porch using 2-burner propane stoves. it was awesome!

first we went to the market and bought all our ingredients. then we learned how to prepare the different dishes and make curry pastes. we talked about how to cook white rice vs. sticky rice, and learned how to make coconut cream and coconut milk (n.b., coconut milk is just diluted coconut cream!). on saturday we made pad thai, tom yum koong, green curry with chicken, a chicken salad (no mayonnaise here) and rubies in coconut milk (rubies = water chestnuts soaked in a red liquid, you can use water+food coloring or red fanta or anything else you like that is probably made with red #5). we also made our own tamarind paste for the pad thai. on sunday we made chicken with cashew nuts, tom kha gai, red curry with chicken, spicy glass noodle salad, and fried fish cakes. oh, and we ate everything we cooked. i ate so much! it was so good!

so what i learned is that thai cooking is easy as long as you have good ingredients. hopefully i can find fresh things back in the states. i know the chilies shouldn't be a problem! (our friend shu-ching is growing many chili plants) the fresh coconut milk was awesome, let me just say. but i don't know where i can get someone to shred coconut for me right when i want it.....

anyway, below are some pictures of my creations (i didn't take one of everything, i was too busy eating!)

all our ingredients...
tom kha...
chicken with cashew nuts...
fish cakes...