Thai Cooking (and eating)

Well our plan was to wake up at 7, work out and head to cooking class. Instead, we rolled out of bed at 8, did some push-ups, sit-ups, and planks, grabbed a quick breakfast (dragonfruit again!) and ran out the door.

We took our cooking class at Baan Thai ("baan" means "home"). We each chose from 3 dishes for each course: an appetizer, soup, a stir-fry, a curry paste, a curry dish, and dessert. We decided that we should never pick the same things because then we'd learn more! Mari's choices: spring rolls, tom kha soup (chicken coconut), pad thai, panang curry paste, pork with panang curry, and fried bananas. I chose fried fish cakes, hot and sour prawn soup, cashew chicken, red curry paste, chiang mai noodles (khao soi), and mango sticky rice.

First, we sat down at a table with a group of 8. We introduced ourselves and sat around drinking water for a bit before heading to the market. The market tour was nice...we had to embrace our touristy-ness a little traveling with a group of 8 white people carrying silly baskets to the market, but it wasn't so bad. At the market we learned about different types of basil, eggplant, ginger and garlic and were also introduced to the ingredients that would be the most unfamiliar (like coriander root). Some of the other students had clearly eaten less Thai food in their lives than we had as they'd never had sweet chili or fish sauce!

We walked back from the market and we had some snacks (I don't know WHY we needed them as we were about to cook and eat a 5 course meal). There were two other rooms of classes going at the same time, so when it was time to start cooking, we separated into different kitchens based on the dish we'd chosen. After cooking, we'd regroup in our original room for eating. Mari and I were happy with our choice to cook different things because when it was time to eat, we each got to sample the other dish as well. :)

During our half hour break around 1pm, we dashed back to a spot near the market where we had seen mojitos and frozen mojitos advertised for 60 and 80 B, respectively. (that's like $2 and $2.75) They took FOREVER to make, so we had to suck them down!! Mari got a HORRIBLE cold headache, but the mojitos were pretty delicious. We power walked back to class and were 5 min late, but everyone was still sitting around chatting. Phew.

We were so full after a couple of courses that we decided to take home leftovers of our main curry dishes...the dessert wouldn't keep as well. :) We really enjoyed everything we made and can't wait to cook for you!!

After cooking class, we wandered a bit before meeting Ton at his uncle's silver shop. I bought 2 prs of earrings and Mari bought one. Then we wandered the Saturday market a bit and Ton bought a delicious chocolate cashew waffle (we had to try it!!)

It was a fabulous culinary day, but we are REALLY going to have to work out from now on. Send motivating thoughts!

-Michelle