We Cook in Chang Mai

After 5 or 6 days in Bangkok, we decided to fly north to Chang Mai, Thailand, a pretty city of around 175,000 in this province of 1.7 million people.  Once we had visited a few more temples and the restaurants and shops of the walled city, I was glad we had only booked a few days there.  The absolute highlight of our trip was our day at the We Cook Thai Home Garden Cooking School.  The instructor, a pretty young Thai chef named Miw, was informative and delightful, possessing a quick wit and boundless patience.

At 9:00 Miw picked us up at our hotel and took us to the local market where we decided which dishes we wanted to cook.  Each person chose 6 dishes to cook from a list of 22. We chose green curry with chicken, penang curry with chicken, chicken in coconut milk soup, deep fried spring rolls, papaya salad, pad thai, fried cashew nut with chicken, mango sticky rice, and banana in coconut milk. 

Of course we also had to make the curry pastes to go with our curry dishes.  And yes, they do eat a lot of chicken here.

Once we had chosen our dishes, Miw's assistant went off to do the shopping while we wandered the large and very clean market for half an hour and tasted some of the local produce.  

Among the fresh and varied ingredients, Ken of course managed to find himself a jelly donut.  At least they were small.










Shopping done, we proceeded on to Miw's house and garden where tables and woks were set up for cooking, and more tables for eating.  And that's what we did for the next 6-1/2 hours.  We cooked delicious dishes under Miw's watchful eye, and then we ate what we cooked.  Most of our class of 12 had not cooked much before, so we had a lot of laughs.

All in all, it was a fun-filled, informative day and at the end we received a little cook book with all the recipes so we could try to duplicate our efforts at home.  Hope you enjoy this pictoral essay of our efforts ...

Some of the ingredients for my Pad Thai and Mango Salad

Perfect Execution!

Ken enjoying cooking with the girls!

His impressively neat spring roll.

Who knew all these things go into curry paste.  It was quite a workout smooshing everything into a paste with a mortar and pestal.  Next time I'll just buy it at the store.

Note to self.  When a Thai cook says 1 tsp curry paste is medium and 2 is hot, don't add 1-1/2.  Remember you are measuring hotness by Thai standards.  Note my partner getting ready to hand me her glass of water.

One of the great things about the day was that when we finished, full and happy, Miw gave us all a cook book so we could replicate the dishes we had made.  Now I just have to figure out who I gave my wok to ...