Cooking in Chiang Mai

On our first day in the Northern city of Chiang Mai, we took a Thai cooking class at the Asia Scenic cooking school. It was recommended through our hostel, so we were a bit skeptical about its quality, but it turned into one of my most memorable experiences on the trip. This was made possible due to a fun, young instructor, and a great group of classmates from around the world.

We were shuttled over to the school for the morning class, and right after meeting everyone, taking tea, and deciding our menu, we made the short walk to a small tourist market. There, our teacher taught us about different types of Thai rice, tofu, and noodles. We also got a chance to wander around and try some of the food in the market. 

When we got back to the school, we had some traditional Thai hors d'oeuvres, and took a tour of the back garden, where we learned about Thai herbs including lemon grass and ginger. The school was set up so that everything was under a pavilion. There were a couple chopping stations with cutting boards and cleavers. There were also wok stations and Western- and Thai-style tables all set up beneath the tin roof.

Finally, we got down to cooking. The first thing on my menu was Pad Thai, which I chose because I'm hoping it'll be the easiest thing to duplicate back home in the States. We started out by chopping massive tons of ingredients, and then we all converged around the wok station to cook. It was fun to throw down oyster sauce and stir ingredients and pretend that I knew what I was doing.

Next, we made soup and curry. Our teacher told us to spice our dishes according to our own preferences and tolerance, but she said, "The spicier the dish, the sexier you are!" So of course some of the men wanted to show off their manliness by adding many chillies to their soup and curry. I chose to make tom yum soup and green curry with medium sexiness. The curry was the hardest because we made it from scratch, grinding up the ingredients with a mortar and pestle.

When it was curry time, our class split up into competing teams for each type of curry -- red, green, and massaman. My team, composed of Debbie, Chan, and me, came in last, and our teacher had to come over and help us finish up the operation. We are weak. BUT, we did have the excuse that green curry is the spiciest, and we had to cover the dish with a hand to keep green pepper paste from flying into our eyes.

We gathered once more around the cooking station, finished cooking the dishes, and finally converged around the table to gorge ourselves before we were rolled back to the hostel. We spent the rest of the day working off our food babies by walking around exploring temples within the Old City.

The finished product - Tom yum, green curry, and rice