"A Lot of Thai" Cooking Class

I knew our Thai cooking class was going to be great when they picked us up at the hotel in a powder blue 1973 VW bus.

The A Lot of Thai cooking school is truly a family affair.  Siripen "Yui" Sriyabhay and her husband Kwan run the class -- she does the cooking and instructing, he does the driving and web/graphic design.  Their two adorable kids Sid and Jun feature prominently in the cookbook and say hello to the class when they get home from school.  Here is Yui welcoming us to the class.

The class is taught in Yui's home, which is very close to our hotel.  This is the outdoor kitchen, with 8 cooking stations.

Clockwise from left: the ingredients for our first dish (phad thai), our woks, and Kevin modeling the "A Lot of Thai" apron.  All of the ingredients were pre-prepped so that all we had to do was chop the vegetables and measure the liquids.

Yui's teaching style was perfect for us.  She explained everything sensibly, in her own style, and with plenty of humor to keep us laughing.   She first explained and demonstrated the dish, then walked around answering questions as we made our own versions.  This is Kevin making Phad Thai; both of our finished dishes were delicious.

Next up was Tom Yam Gung, which is hot and sour prawn soup.  Here, Yui doles out two shrimp heads for each of us to add to our ingredients.

And here is my finished product.  Yui tasted it and said "Not enough heat, not enough salt".  She was right; I made it mild on purpose by removing all the seeds from the chilis and holding back on the fish sauce, so I doubt any self-respecting Thai would like my Tom Yam!

Our third dish of the morning was Green Curry with Chicken which is one of Kevin's favorites.  It has a whole host of ingredients: coconut cream, curry paste, coconut milk, eggplant, kaffir lime leaves, red chilis, fish sauce, palm sugar, sweet basil, and chicken.  It sounds complicated but is really not too difficult to make.

Here are Kevin's and my respective dishes.  Kevin made green curry; I made red curry.  But mine isn't very red because I wanted to make sure it was not spicy so I used less red curry paste than the recipe called for!  In Thai, the word for "not spicy" is "mai phet"!

And our last dish in the morning was Cashew Chicken, which is my absolute favorite.  I have even learned to say it in Thai, but it took a lot of practice because it has a very long name: gai-pad-med-ma-muang-him-ma-pan.  My version turned out fantastic, but that's probably because I followed the recipe exactly since this dish is not spicy.

After eating all morning, we took a break to go to Yui's local produce market.

She took us around to each stall and showed us many of the local veggies and what they are used for.

This woman sold banana leaf bundles containing all the ingredients to make your own curry paste (mortar and pestle not included).

Clockwise from left: yellow persimmons, green mangoes, bumpy jackfruit, vats of uncooked rice, garlic and shallots, red and green chilis.

Various eggs for sale.  The pink ones are "century eggs" -- they are cured in a clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice husk mixture for up to 5 months and then dyed pink (to distinguish them from regular eggs).

The egg inside is a black gelatinous color.  Yui said that Thais call them kai yieow maa, meaning "egg urine horse", although horse urine is not actually used in the process (it doesn't have the right pH to cure them).  Maybe they got that name because of the smell?

Photo courtesy of www.foododdity.com

Well I hope everyone's hungry now.  Because after the market we went straight back into the kitchen to prepare sweet coconut sticky rice with mango, a traditional Thai dessert.  First the glutinous rice (it doesn't have any gluten, just a high starch content) is soaked in water overnight.  Yui includes a little bit of black sticky rice for nutritional value and to give her rice a purple color.

Then the rice is steamed for about 15 minutes.

Afterwards you remove it from the heat and mix it with coconut cream, sugar and salt.  Once mixed, cover and let it stand for a half an hour.  Just before serving, top it with diced mango.  You can then add additional cream or even Thai custard.

Our final dish was traditional fried spring rolls.  First we stir-fried a mixture of garlic, pork, cabbage, sprouts and glass noodles with sauce.

Then we wrapped the rolls using the technique Yui showed to us.  According to Yui, if you wrap them correctly they should not be very greasy.

Next step was to deep fry for one to two minutes.

And the end result is two perfect, non-greasy, spring rolls.  Here is a photo of our last two dishes.  Delicious!

We really had a wonderful day learning to prepare these dishes.  I would highly recommend A Lot of Thai cooking class to anyone planning to visit Chiang Mai.  Now we can bring the taste of Thailand home with us!