THAILAND: May Kaidee's Cooking Course

Part of the itenerary on my Thaintro tour in Thailand was to go to a Thai cooking school and learn to cook some of the traditional dishes of Thailand. This was one of the parts of the tour that I was most excited for. I love Thai food, I love to cook at home and I couldn't wait to bring back my new found skills.

The cooking school we went to was in Bangkok and was called May Kaidee's Cooking School. We were given aprons and bandanas to wear, a cooking song to learn and a recipe book to read from. We also had a good 1/2 an hour of dressing up and dancing... a rather unusual cooking course!

As there was about 25 of us we were split into teams to cook the dishes. We learnt to make 3 dishes, all of which were delicious and you can see them below

Tom Yam Soup

This is made in a wok. We started by adding about 300ml of water to the very hot wok. Then we added kaffir lime leaves, galangal and lemon grass. After this had simmered for a little while we added carrot, onion, tomato, tofu, mushroom. baby corn and broccoli. Lots of veggies! Once these ingredients started to boil we added dark and light soy sauceand brown sugar. The vegetables were then left to cook until soft. Just before serving we added spring onion, corriander leaves, lime juice, tom yam chili paste and coconut milk. Our team was a bit heavy handed with the coconut milk, when the soup has more coconut milk (and usually less water also) it is referred to as Tom Kha Soup. So although we set out to make Tom Yam Soup, we actually made Tom Kha soup. It still tasted great though! It was slightly sour, a bit spicy with a creamy taste coming through from the coconut milk.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai is also made in a wok. With the wok on a high heat, we added oil then carrot, onion, tomato, tofu and garlic. This was then cooked for a couple of minutes before pushing to the side of the wok. We then added a raw beaten egg into the middle and cooked until it looked like an omelette. Just before it was fully cooked we turned it over and chopped it up in the wok and pushed to the side. Into the centre we then added some water and presoaked noodles then mixed all the other ingredients in the wok together with the noodles. To finish we added dark and light soy sauce, sugar, bean sprouts and roasted peanuts. After plating up we also squeezed fresh lime over the dish for extra flavour. Pad Thai is one of my favourite Thai dishes and this version we made did not disappoint. There was the right mix of sweet and sour and the peanuts add an extra level to the already delcicious flavour.

Massaman Curry

The final dish was also made in a wok, however we were split into different teams for this challenge, which was also a competition to make the best Massaman Curry. Similar to the Pad Thai we started with oil in the wok followed by carrots, onion and tomato, but then also added chili paste and curry powder. Once the ingredients were "fragrant" we added water and coconut milk and cooked until the mixture was thick. We then added light and dark soy sauce, sugar, vegetables (including sweet potato and pumpkin) and tofu. More cocounut milk and lime juice was added and cooked until thick. Before serving, we added roasted peanuts. As you can see from the photo we added some streaks of sauce to add a bit of class to our dish (hoping to get extra points for presentation). This was the first time I had tried Massaman curry and I really liked it. In contrast to the other 2 dishes, this was a purely creamy, slightly sweet dish without any sourness. I tried massaman curry a couple of times from restaurants in Thailand after the cooking course and actually found that I liked the version that we had made here the best... probably because we were able to make it specifically to our own taste. Unfortunately we did not win the prize for best curry, but having polished off the dish and still wanting more, I think we did pretty well!

Although I had a really fun time at the cooking school and thought the food we made was really great, I was a little disappointed for 3 main reasons. Firstly there were too many of us in the group, I would have preferred to have cooked the dishes on my own or even in a group of 2, but 3-4 people crowded round 1 wok was a bit much and I didn't get a true hands on experience. Secondly all of the ingredients were already prepared for us so there was no cutting, weighing etc involved. Although this is not necessarily important to know how to cook the dishes, it feels more of your own creation if you carry out the whole process. Finally the curry pastes were already made up. For each of the dishes the paste was an integral and probably the most important ingredient for getting the flavour right. I would have liked to learn how to make them: what spices to use, what quantity and how to blend them, as it is unlikely I will be able to exactly recreate these dishes without knowing what was in the pastes.

In conclusion, great fun but I would have preferred a smaller group and to have learnt how to make the pastes and prepare the ingredients.