Thai Cooking Class

First I must fill you in on our cooking class. We found the place a bit early so did some wandering around. Once we had wandered for a while, we waited for the lady to come and meet us for the class. First we took our baskets, umbrellas and water to the market. Our instructor told us about some of the different vegetables they use in Thailand. Some of the exciting ones I remember were different kinds of ginger roots, different smaller garlic, many different kinds of basil. That was the gist of our time in the market. She filled up our baskets with the things we needed for the class and we headed back to the school.

The way it was set up was very well organized. First we would sit in a group in one room and put all the ingredients together. She would tell us information about the food we were making and how to make it, let us participate and then we would bring it out to the wok and fry it up. Once we completed making our meal, we were off to the air conditioned room to enjoy it. As we were eating, our instructor and her partner were setting up for us to come in to the next one. Like I said, very well organized.

We made a total of 5 meals. I was stuffed to the brim, like I literally thought I was going to explode. No joke. First we made a hot and sour soup. We were allowed to choose chicken or prawns to put in, I chose chicken (surprise surprise) but I did try Brigittes with prawn and it was very good. This soup was delicious. Let me just say that EVERYTHING we ate was beyond delicious. There are no words. The second thing we ate was phad thai. Going into the cooking class, we didn't think we were going to get to make phad thai. But we made it and it was the best phad thai I've ever eaten in my life. Not because I cooked it, but because it was made...just....so well. I can't explain. Our next meal was what Brigitte and I refer to as a chicken salad. It was served in a soup spoon and you were supposed to eat it with your fingers with some sticky rice. Also very very good. Our next meal was a green chicken curry. At this point, I was getting to be quite stuffed. But I forced myself to eat it and, you guessed it, SO YUMMY! The other nice thing about cooking the food yourself is you can decide how spicy you want things to be. Being in Korea has made my affinity for spicy food rise so I can now handle much more than I could before I went to Korea. Anyways, it was DELICIOUS. The last meal, which unfortunately I literally felt if I ate anymore food I would be sick, but it was a coconut milk banana dessert. I thought I didn't like coconut, but it literally tasted like banana pudding. It saddened my heart that I couldn't finish it in order to keep myself from vomiting but it was SO GOOD as well.

Our instructor was very nice, quite funny. Our class was composed of 10 women (the other two classes going on at the same time had men and such in them but ours was coincidence) and most of them were from Michigan doing a nursing clinical somewhere in Thailand. Lucky them.

Anyways, if you ask me to choose a favorite dish, there's no way I could, it would be a tie between phad thai, green curry, and the coconut banana dessert. I'll post pictures of all of these adventures very soon, but I needed to catch up on the blog part first :)