Youse will all want to be coming to ours over Christmas, as we have done a Thai cookery class: all four of us (the kids helped chop, crush and make paste).
What a fabulous experience, and the course was taken in a family house in the city, which had a compact but completely utilised veggie and herb garden. They have an organic farm 20km from the city, and have a philosophy of sustainable and gentle cooking/eating.
We first got taken to a market to see how to buy the ingredients, the difference between all the forms of rices, spices and chilies, and to appreciate the colourful array of fruit and vegetables.
Food markets are makeshift, chaotic, rudimentary stalls, with rickety tables of different sizes and heights, often stabilised by bricks, tiles, string or anything that is fit for purpose.
Food markets are a hive of activity and have a fug of smells that change from stand to stand…..the sweet aroma of limes and kafir leaves, the hint of the nasal tickle when passing sacks of dried red chilies, the more pungent meat and fish smells, the charcoaly searing of whole fish amongst other undefinable but typically Thai smells.
A delight to all the senses, as you are offered a piece of soft mango or to sample a peanut and sesame biscuit or other unknown surprise.
We had a tour around the urban garden, packed with herbs and spices, some which I had never seen before, and others which I had only seen in dry form.
We then returned and had a most delicious welcoming snack called Meang Kum, which was eaten by forming a betel leaf into a cup/cone, and placing a pinch of toasted coconut, roasted peanut a tiny cube of lime and ginger, along with a shallot and chilli. Then a spoonful of palm sugar syrup is placed over the contents of the betel leaf, the leaf was closed over, and the whole betel parcel is popped into the mouth and chewed slowly. It has all the flavours/tastes of Thai cooking: spicy, sour, sweet, salty and bitter. A taste explosion, which made us appreciate the attention to detail in Thai cooking, the intricacy and balance that Thai cooks obtain.
We spent the day cooking pad Thai, stir fried chicken and cashew, papaya salad, glass noodle salad, spring rolls, crushing curry pastes with mortar and pestle, green curry and khao soi, tom yum , tom kha kai and deserts of sticky coconut rice with mango and banana in coconut cream.
Yum and Delish!
We really couldn’t finish all we cooked, despite it all being so divine! (I got to practice my one word that I have never forgotten since Aberdeen days, when Waw taught me how to say “I’m full” – which is the same word for butter in Irish!). Our only problem is that I don’t think we are cooking on this trip to South East Asia, as the food is so good and readily affordable, with vendors literally everywhere you look. It is one of the nice things about this trip – I haven’t cooked for ages, and am enjoying my break from cooking. This introduction to Thai cooking has reignited an urge to get creative with my culinary skills, which had become somewhat mundane and run of the mill over the last while, largely because I couldn’t find the proper time to prepare food, that good food requires.
So watch out y’all. Next dinner party is going to be spectacular!
Thursday 24th Sept, 2015