lavanderblues

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

my cooking class in chiang mai

for 3 glorious hours in chiang mai, i had a wonderful home cooking class with Yui and Kwan and their lovely son Sid at the alotofthai home cooking "school".

Chiang mai is known for its numerous cooking schools. These come in all forms, from high class hotel restaurant classes (e.g. the Four Seasons), to these more localised home cooking classes organised by locals in their own homes! i opted for the latter, as i felt that i wanted to get to know the city better through its people, and it'd be interesting to visit one of their homes, and get to know them on a more informal basis.

It was a good choice. I chose this school after reading a raving review about it on a thai food web portal, and gave Yui (the teacher) a call when i arrived in Chiang Mai. On the appointed time, her husband Kwan drove to my hotel in his van, and picked me up. In the van were the 6 other students i were to be attending this class with; 4 australians and 2 americans. They all came in couples, whilst i was alone. My parents had no interest in joining me in this venture. Despite being alone, and feeling a little awkward being the only asian in the group, the warmth of Yui quickly endeared everyone in the group to each other, and i felt less lonely.

We cooked tom yum soup, green curry, and my favourite pad thai. =) she did it in the way that wld be easy for us to replicate at home; ie using stocks and pastes that wld be more easily available and accessible to us, rather than doing everything from scratch, which probably would have been more authentic. But the thought of having to pound curry paste for hours before just to make green curry for eg, would definitely deter me from ever cooking it again at home. As it was, the dishes turned out great, and i have fair confidence in cooking them again =) We all had our own little cooking stations, and were allowed to customise the dishes to our own tastes and liking! (I astonished everyone in the group, even Yui, with the amount of chillis i insisted on adding in my food hahaha!)

The lessons also included a local market tour, which presented no particular interest to me because its basically the same as the wet markets in singapore, but was definitely an eye opener to the caucasians.

lin~*
12:22 am