Baan Thai Cookery School!

Good morning all! Breakfast? Not likely. Today we attend a Thai cooking school with 5 dishes to try. I want to go hungry!

The Baan Thai Cookery school 'mini bus' picks us up from the lobby. We are the first to enter the back of the ute...with canvas top. It is pretty cool to travel like the local Chiang Mai residents in the back of a ute with a canvas cover, no seatbelts  just smiles to guide us from danger.

The first pick up is a French couple, (a heavy French accent is pretty easy to pick up.), they are already complaining about the price to the driver! What the fuck! Anyway, the couple pile in but don’t respond to the hello...that awkward moment when you are in the back of a ute in Chiang Mai with French tourists that don’t say hello back...lol. The good news arrived when a Swiss couple are picked up at the next hotel. Just married. We could tell immediately due to the affection levels when they enter the ute. They are both smiles and the conversation starts quickly.

The young girl doesn’t speak much English but her husband is pretty good. So we chat about where we are going and how long we are staying. It turns out that the Swiss couple have been in Koh Samui for 2 weeks and Chiang Mai for 2 weeks staying with relatives.  It is their honeymoon. They are as excited as we are to get cooking. The French couple begin to open up a little. They have no travel plans just cruising around Asia. Cool.

The next pick-up is two young girls from USA...I will reserve my comments as Mum said if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it. Live and let live I guess. They were in Thailand for a good time and didn’t care who they offended along the way. All the best to them...Last another French duo, Mother and daughter. They were quite pleasant. Our original French couple breathe a loud sigh of relief they have the home turf advantage. (Sure I don’t speak French but I get the general understanding of what is being said in tight quarters. It isn’t that fucking hard to understand when someone is relieved there is another group that speaks their language!)

Enough of the ride there, how about the cooking school you say? Well...

Cute looking, the family lives upstairs, cooks downstairs

Baan Thai Cookery School is a place run by Miss Benz. Her older sister, Miss Maew started Baan Thai in 1999. Miss Maew dies of cancer in about 2001 but the family continues the business treating all customers as friends and providing them with high quality instruction.

The agenda for the day is to meet and greet, choose our dishes and set off for the local markets before starting the cooking.

The rain is light but they provide an umbrella for everyone. Miss Benz give me a pretty purple one, she asks if I want pink...tempting but it is very lady-boy looking. It is a quick walk to the local food market.

Open air, friendly bartering. Sticky hot though!

They were busy, full of locals and a few groups of cooking schools it turns out. Miss Benz pulls us around to the first stall. Making and selling noodles and tofu. They had all the noodles there. Glass noodles, rice noodles, egg noodles it was pretty cool. And you buy them fresh for a couple of baht. The tofu came in two kinds, fried and silky soft tofu. Right next to us was a stall with live fish in baskets and being barbequed over hot coals. It all smelt great but the food safety standards were non-existent.

The next stall had fresh vegetables and herbs. There are three types of chilli used in Thai cooking. The big long chilli is Spur Chilli, (Phrik Yuak), which you typically see in Woolies. It is used for flavour, either dried  and mashed in red Chiang Mai curry paste or sliced as a garnish for dishes. There is another type of long red chilli called Sky Pointing Chilli, (Phrik Chee Fah), somewhere between the size of a stick of gum and your index finger. This is slightly hotter and used mainly in the chilli pastes and curry pastes. The last are tiny chillies referred to as “rat shit” chilli, (Phrik Ki Noo), or mouse shit chilli. That about describes the size and shape of them, both red and green. These are the hottest of them all. I have had them in my Tom Yam soup as you may have read earlier on in this blog and they are really hot. Miss Benz offers us to try and giggles, when I take it from her and chew it she looks a little bit puzzled...it was fucking flaming hot but I smiled and said “it is nice, good flavour” I think I did a good job of hiding the pain in my mouth. I see a stall selling fresh pineapple out of an ice box. I hope this demo goes quickly!

We get a run down on the herbs, coriander is sold together with garlic chives as they are nearly always used together in Thai cooking. The galangal is a mad Thai ginger, and I find out it is used to flavour Tom Yam but you don’t eat it...haha I tried to eat it and wondered why it was so hard and gritty! Kaffir lime leaves smelt great and the lime itself had heaps of oil in it when we squeezed. Lemon grass, holy basil, Thai basil it was an assault on the senses but a very welcome one.

Coles and Woolworths are not this fucking fresh!

After the demonstration we get to stroll through the market. There are bags of prawn crackers, all different shapes, colours and flavours. Mad amounts of roasted nuts, peanuts deep fried in coconut oil and more fruit and veg than one could imagine. I scoot over to the pineapple stall and pick up a bag for 20bht. It is so fresh and sweet and is taking away the pain of the chilli.

The fresh fruit is better than any lollies or chocolate bar

Sweet, savory and everything else!

We get a basket to carry around each, Miss Benz fills them with herbs, spices, fruit and mushrooms. Back to the cooking school we go.

I chose to make the Stir Fried Prawn with Curry Powder, Fried Fish Cakes, Hot & Sour Prawn Soup, Penang Curry with Pork and Deep Fried Banana. Vicky goes for. Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Chicken in Coconut milk, Chiang Mai Noodle and Mango with Sticky Rice. It’s a big menu of 5 dishes plus a curry paste. It is at this time when we are split up into groups to cook the dishes we have chosen together.

I am at the back of the house to make the stir fried  prawn with curry powder. Miss Benz has us around a table each with a station complete with log chopping board, huge Thai cooking knife and a mix of fresh herbs.  We set about chopping up according to Miss Benz’s instructions. The kaffir lime leaf is the hardest to chop finely I find, as my knife did roll well but the board being natural had troughs in it. Everything smells great already. Miss Benz takes us to our woks and sets one off. Within the space of 5 minutes she has instructed, cooked and dished up a plate of prawns...I can’t believe how easy that was. Now it is our turn. Medium heat, palm oil, garlic, onion toss toss toss curry powder water prawns toss toss toss fish sauce, sugar, kaffir lime and coriander...toss toss done!

Prawn with Curry Powder...simple and tasty!

Pad Thai, Vicky Style!

I get back to our first meeting table and sit down. I am the first to arrive. I take some pictures and contemplate waiting to be polite...haha for about half a second! You should have smelt it...and tasted it. I am about halfway done when Vicky returns with her Pad Thai, which looks and smells even better! Nomnomnomnomnom we all look happy with the effort and are surprised it was so easy.

Next up were the fish cakes. It is bullshit easy to make the fish cakes. I don’t know why I ever got it wrong! They are fried in a wok of bubbling palm oil. Once you have a fishy, limey, curry cake batter or paste you spoon it into the hot oil and press it down firmly with the back of the spatula for about 5 -10 seconds. This makes it from a ball to a flat pattie. These were the surprise package for me as the taste was amazing, not burnt or fishy. I beat everyone back to the table again and mung out after some photos. Vicky arrives with spring rolls, they are neat and taste awesome! Apparently the instructor accidentally broke the spring roll sheets so everyone got to make two big ones and a small one. A test for the fine motor skills!

Very neat spring rolls, nice work wifey!

Fish cakes will never be the same again in this house!

Off to Tom Yam land! Tom Yam is my favourite soup. It is hot and sour. Two kinds of hot, spicy and boiling hot. We are going to use prawns, therefore it is Tom Yam Goong or Kung as it is pronounced. Most of the soup is not edible, for example the kaffir lime leaf is torn into four pieces and the lemon grass is cut into three sections, then flattened with a knife. The galangal is sliced into large discs. These are all for flavour and aroma and are left in the bowl at the end, not eaten.

We arrive to boiling pots of water. Chuck in onion, garlic, rat shit chilli, lime leaf and lemon grass. Wait a bit while still boiling. Add the roasted chilli paste. Squeeze in some lime, add some sugar chuck in the prawns. When the prawns are cooked the soup in ready. Fucking amazing! It tastes better than the one I bought on the street! (I may have over done the chilli though, my mouth was burning!!). Vicky made the coconut chicken soup and thinks she mucked it up a bit, as it didn’t boil thoroughly. It still tasted great.

Tom Yam Goong. The most inportant ingredient is the roasted chilli paste

We all head off to make our desert dishes before the final meal. Deep fried banana is pretty straight forward. Slice up a banana or two into three lengthways. You can also use sweet potato. A batter is made up with various flours, coconut, sugar and a touch of salt. We dip our bananas in the big batter bowl and head out to the giant wok. It is full of palm oil and is bubbling away. The first step is to flavour the oil using pandan leaf. The leaf has a fresh nutty sweet smell and when dropped into the oil fizzes and pops. The smell is like fresh popcorn only sweeter. In go the bananas which in the size we are cooking, (hundreds of slices), should take about 20 – 30 minutes.

I was happy on the inside! I didn't know about the photo lol

Miss Benz takes us again to make a curry paste for the Penang curry. She wants someone strong to pound away on the giant mortar and pestle...why she chose me I don’t know. The technique was to squat on a wooden stool with the mortar between your knees. Left hand half covering the bowl and the pestle smashed down onto the contents. The idea was for the left hand to stop the bits of chilli, lemon grass, garlic etc flying out. I could manage it without getting it on my apron and face. Thankfully when the chilli was to be added a change of guard was made and a poor Pommie bloke had to smash away at the hot paste. We all tried the paste pre-cooking and surprisingly it was not spicy. I figured that is what the roasted chilli paste was for.  The Penang cooks up in minutes and I arrive back at the table to find I was the last! Vicky’s Chiang Mai noodles, (Khao Soi), looks amazingy authentic and she is gobbling it down fast.

Chiang Mai noodle or Khao Soi. This was Vicky's favourite

We sit around the table, smiling, slouched full. Then the deserts come out. Now, banana deep fried doesn’t look too appealing but the taste is insane. Vicky’s sticky rice is pretty awesome too, not like rice pudding which is slimey and gross, sticky rice is sticky soft and sweet coconut flavoured. Now we are really stuffed!

Deep fried banana = jizz

Fresh mango and sweet sticky rice is the perfect combo!

We received a cook book each with all of the menu items and herbs, spices and ingredients included. Looks like we might be eating Thai in the Thorncroft house a lot more in the future!

If you are in Chaing Mai, for 900bht per person for a full day including transfer from and to your hotel and a walk through the markets DO IT with Baan Thai Cookery School. Some of the other schools were offering less for more baht. This was fun and exciting  and entertaining and all of the instructors were fantastic, warm and friendly.

Go here: www.baanthaicookery.com 900bht might sound a bit steep but when you get some cooking schools offering three dishes, no markets and maybe transfers from your hotel for 1200 – 2000bht it is pretty awesome.

This was our last day and night in Chiang Mai and it was a great day to finish on as it rained the whole time but we were indoors apart from at the markets. The Mercure Chiang Mai is a reasonably priced hotel and great if you just want a nice comfy room to rest your head at night. Don’t expect five star rooms or sparkling clean fixtures, (parts of the bathroom were a bit dodgy, but it reminded me of home lol), the staff were all very friendly and willing to help if you offer the same smiling courtesy they show you. I don’t know how some of the European guests managed to get anything done because they were so rude to everyone. I guess it is just the warm and kind nature of the Thai people to laugh it off and do their job even if the guest is an arsehole!

Nice staff, good aircon...just don't expect the cleanest places in Chiang Mai!

Tomorrow we jet off to Patong Beach, Phuket. I expect this to be exciting and to put a dent in the wallet J.

I’m off! - Chris