Since moving to Thailand I have A LIST. Things that I want to desperately do before we leave. A Thai cooking class is one and got to Cross it off the list today but now I've added Cooking with Poo in Bangkok. That's the trouble with this list it keeps getting things added.
I have been to a few cooking classes but Happy Home Thai Cooking Class was different. My favorite expression here sums it up beautifully, Same Same but Different. In the US the cooking classes I've been to you're in a sterile kitchen with all the appropriate measures for safety. You never cross contaminate (god forbid). Lol. Cookware is run through a giant industrial dishwasher. There is a certain plate for only meat and you never put veggies on the same plate. Measurements are accurate. The instructor would never grab a spoon and taste out of your bowl to see if your dish is perfect then add something over your shoulder if it wasn't.
HH Thai cooking school was like cooking with grandma. We show up to this tiny house where the downstairs is turned into a room with 2 wooden tables with 7 gas burners with big gas tanks under the table ( okay maybe not that part is like cooking with grandma). A super sweet Thai woman, Sherie, greets us in the street. She speaks beautiful English which she later tells us was a necessary skill she taught herself when she realized she needed to be able to support herself in her own country. She is soooo happy to have us. She has just moved her business and is happy we found it. She has 2 tables set up for us to sit around and relax. The wooden tables with different chairs and thai table cloths. In the middle is big plastic pitchers full of water with a bunch of miss matched plastic cups. She hands us all aprons. Fans are all around because there is no air conditioner.
We have brought Prosecco with us. Really can you do cooking class without it? 😉.
She brings us over to the ingredient table where all the produce is displayed and she tells what everything is. So fresh!
We each have a station set up with our own cutting board, knife, plate, bowl and of course gas burner with pan. All the ingredients are aligned on a plate. An soy sauce bottle, fish sauce bottle, oil, palm sugar, and fresh tamarind juice are in the middle for us to use how we want. She walks us through step by step. We are all making individual servings. Our first course was Green Curry with Chicken/Kang Khiao Wan Gai. We start by making our green curry paste and then add in the rest of the ingredients. It's like a soup that you eat over rice. After we are all done we pour it into bowls and head to the table to eat. Wow!
But wait we are not done. After eating and relaxing we get up to do the entire thing over with 5 different dishes. We made Tom Kha Gai/Coconut chicken soup (my favorite), Larb Moo/Spicy Pork salad, Spicy Pork with basil leaves/Phad Krabi Paola Moo and Mango with sticky rice/Khao Neaw Mamoung (another favorite). I should not have eaten breakfast. We ate and relaxed after every dish we prepared. If we didn't finish or didn't want to eat everything it was put into a Baggie for us to take home. I have never cooked such awesome Thai food. Lol 😜.
There were 8 of us cooking together. It was such a great day of chatting and cooking, Plus a little bit of sipping. Sherie would walk around with her spoon and try what we were making and add something here or there. The place was not by any means fancy but everything looked so clean. Though I am not sure where the utensils were washed. And I don't think the knives were sterilized in between cutting chicken, pork or vegetables but I'm use to it after living here for some time now.
A funny that you would never see in the US - she was missing a gas burner, we had 8 people and she had only counted on 7. She dragged out a large propane tank (like what we would hook up to our grills) and she turned the knob and lit it. The top was converted into a burner so you can place your pan right on it. You stood around the tank and cooked your food. Hilarious. Sadly I'm kind of use to this stuff so I barely give it a thought until just thinking about it now. Lol
Ok so safety might not be their first concern but boy the Thais know how to cook.
The food was delicious. I came home with a few doggie bags but not as many as I thought I would.
I survived all the cross contamination and sharing of utensils and learned how to make awesome Thai food. Now all I need is someone to buy it, prep it, and put it all on a little plate for me to throw in a pan. 😝. Oh and clean up after me! Best cooking ever.
Can't wait for Cooking with Poo!
Cheers from the other side
😘 M
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