Pad Thai Anyone?

During Christy's first weekend in BKK we took a cooking class at Silom Cooking School. First thing Saturday morning, after Christy's late arrival the night before, we headed to the class so she could not only eat her first Thai meal, but also cook it herself.

The class began at the market where our instructor took us around showing and buying all the different ingredients we needed for our meal. Among other things he taught us about the different types of chilies, did you know the smaller the more spice? (Only kidding of course we knew that before…maybe)

Once we arrived at the cooking school we spent the morning cleaning and preparing the different vegetables and meats. We must have cleaned 3 or 4 different types chilies, baby eggplant, lemon grass, lots of leaves (mint, kaffir lime, coriander, etc), about 3 or 4 different types of of ginger (who knew there were even so many? I thought there was one kind and it’s the kind they serve with sushi), and tons of other stuff.

After all the cleaning was done we sat down at our individual cutting boards to get started chopping. We each prepared our own portions, and we even had our own woks to actually cook the food ourselves. (This is surprising to me because all of the classes I have taken in America the cooking seemed to be more of a group effort than individual.)

We learned how to make some of our favorite Thai dishes Pad Thai (fried noodles), Tom Yum Gung (spicy shrimp soup), Green Curry, sticky rice, and some of our not so favorite dishes rubies in coconut milk. This is a dessert that is basically water chestnuts covered in tapioco flour, soaked in red Fanta, boiled in water, and then served with coconut milk and ice.

Pad Thai

Christy with the Rubies in Coconut Milk

The rubies and coconut milk aren't something I think any of us will be making again in our own kitchen, but they were fun to try.

I did learn one thing from this class and that is how much I want a wok! We had a great time, and hopefully we can recreate these dishes back in America to share with our friends and families.

Xoxo,

Nichole, Jenny, and Christy