One of the great pleasures of living in
Chiang Mai is the quality of the food to be found in literally hundreds of
little spots around the city. Sarah and I want to make sure that we are able to
continue eating this kind of delicious food even after we leave so, with that
in mind, we took a full day Thai cooking class last week. It is called Grandma’s Thai Recipes and is run by a
lovely woman named Jib (most Thais have nicknames which are nothing like their
real names but are much easier for farangs to pronounce). Jib and her family
own a restaurant which operates at the Lanna Golf Course just north of Chiang
Mai and it was there that we spent the day cooking. Jib only does private
lessons so we were the only students that day. She even came to our building to
pick us up.
Jib allowed us to choose up to 8 dishes to
cook (and afterward eat) so we chose the following: kau tang ta Tang (rice
cakes in peanut sauce), som tam (papaya salad), gai pad met mamuang (cashew
chicken), kau pad (fried rice), pad preeawan (sweet and sour stir fry), kao soi
(yellow curry), tom yum (lemongrass soup) and sticky rice. Some of the other
cooking classes are done in a classroom type setting where each student would
have his/her own station. However, our lessons took place right in the kitchen
of the restaurant on a busy Friday. There were positives and negatives to this
arrangement. It was interesting to see the real chefs preparing food for
customers but I felt constantly like we were in their way. Nobody seemed to
mind our presence though and, like most people we’ve met here, made us feel
extremely welcome.
At the risk of hyperbolizing and sounding
boastful, I believe that the food we cooked was better than any food that has
ever been cooked in history. Of course Jib played a small part in our success
by showing us exactly what to do every second of the day. Seriously though, she
was a wonderful host and we had a great day. There’s no way we would be able to
remember everything she taught us but a detailed recipe book comes as part of
the course. The process itself was often fascinating and they even still use an
oversized mortar and pestle (I haven’t seen those since grade 10 science class)
to grind the various ingredients into paste. Jib was thoughtful enough to tell
us we could use a food processor for this procedure back in Canada. She also
told us that a Thai kitchen should be noisy so the pounding of the pestle and
the smashing of the garlic are just normal noises.
Six hours is usually a little longer than I
like to spend in the kitchen, but on this day it was definitely worth it.
Until next time……..
Click here to see all the photos from our cooking day.
Click here for the link to Jib's Cooking Class
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