Thailand 2011 - Thai Cooking Class

One of the activities we had not planned on doing and also didn't know was so popular in Thailand was taking a Thai cooking class. In Chiang Mai, we decided to give this a try and signed up for the Siam Rice Thai Cookery School. Our charming and personable teacher, Nancy, made the whole experience really enjoyable. This was one of my favorite activities of the trip. For about $23 per person, the school picked us up from our hotel and we spent half the day cooking and eating 3 dishes, drinking Chang beer, and also learned to carve a decorative flower carrot.

Here's a video of Phil's turn making cashew chicken stir fry.

His cashew chicken stir fry was pretty tasty. The other ingredients included onions, green onions, carrots, dried chili, and baby corn.

My stir fry dish was chicken with holy basil, green beans, onions, and red chili peppers. Both dishes were delicious.

Nancy also taught us how to carve flowers out of carrots. Phil's flower is in the foreground, and mine in the background. I would say his is more of a sun missing some rays.

Pounding out our own curry paste made of various peppers.

Would you trust these two in the kitchen?

I chose Khao Soy as my curry dish. It was something different that I've never had before. Khao soy is a noodle soup curry with pepper paste, onion, and crispy fried noodle toppings. It was just ok. Not my favorite curry but I was trying to choose something out of the ordinary.

Phil's penang curry was a much better choice and not too spicy either. Very good. I had food envy.

Our dessert course had various coconut milk-based options. Phil chose the sticky rice with young coconut. AMAZING! It's sticky rice with coconut milk and shreds of fresh young coconut which makes it much sweeter. It may just look like a bowl of rice but its so much more.

I made sticky rice with mango which basically uses the same directions as Phil's dish minus the young coconut. A great classic Thai dessert. 

The other couples in our class chose the full day course which included 6 courses. We were already full after 3 courses but everyone else was stuffed beyond capacity. It's definitely a great way to spend the whole day cooking, eating, and socializing. Nancy also gave us a cook book of recipes which we brought back to the States. I can't wait to try some of the recipes. Phil was really dreading this because he thought it sounded boring but now we both agree it was one of the cooler experiences we had in Thailand. I highly recommend doing a course like this if you travel to Thailand.