so much incredibly delicious thai food

it's been a few days... i got back to korea, and instantly got super busy. with getting back in the routine of waking up to an alarm, teaching classes, and having a set schedule for most of the time. i believe there is only two more blogs left of my trip to thailand... this one about the food/amazing cooking class. and then phuket. sooooo... thai food and a cooking class. 

saturday night after the thai boxing, steph and i went to a restaurant to get a beer to bring in my birthday. 24th birthday in thailand... awesome! we signed up for a cooking class that our hostel lady, Nine, insist that we do. she said it was the best cooking class out of all of them, so we did it. TOTALLY WORTH IT! so sunday we woke up early, got ready and were downstairs waiting for our ride. 


when our ride arrived, we met lucia, who we spent the day cooking with. she was from argentina, had been working in new zealand and was on vacation with her boyfriend. our first stop was the open market. our two awesome teachers, pot and siam, showed us around for a bit, quizzed us on some of the vegetable we would later be cooking with and let us explore for 10 minutes on our own. the color was so overwhelming. all the fresh fruits and vegetable everywhere. 

fresh veggies at the market

cutting fresh mushrooms

cutting fresh mushrooms

from there, we were taken to Siam Rice Thai Cookery School, which we later learned was actually the home of Pot and Nancy, the owners and cooks of the school. they run the school out of their own home. it was awesome. the three of us were seated at the table, given a brochure and told we were picking our own menus. since we chose the full day, we would be making a total of 7 courses; including a soup, a pasta dish, 2 appetizers, stir fried vegetables, our own curry paste which we would use to make curry and a dessert. we could each choose our own. so i choose the following: 
- Pad Thai
- Chicken and Coconut Soup
- Spring Rolls
- Papaya Salad
- Chicken with Cashew Nuts and Fried Vegetables
- Massaman Curry (with the curry paste we each made from scratch) 
- Sticky Rice with Mango
(In the pamphlet about the class, it says "DO NOT EAT BREAKFAST!" so so so true. there was so much food and so many leftovers. 




after that we went straight outside to the kitchen area and got down to business. first lesson we learned, "move your body" in everything we did, weather cutting, frying, stirring... anything, you had to move your body. we first were introduced to Nancy, who is absolutely amazing. she has so much passion for cooking and she loves to share it with other. her personality is hilarious and working with her didn't feel like a class, but like she was a friend showing us how to cook. we all felt so incredibly comfortable being there. it was great. 

first we made the pasta dish and soup. pretty easy. i chose to make pad thai and chicken and coconut soup. they were both pretty easy to make and were wonderful. after finishing those, we moved the finished food into the dining area and came back to make the spring rolls and papaya salad. we all chose to make these two appetizers. they were delicious. and while making the spring rolls we learned out to properly fold/roll the spring rolls. after those were done, we moved them into the dining area and were told we could eat. first round of food was delicious. thankfully we were allowed to have leftovers. they boxed and packaged all of our leftovers up so we could take them home. 

chicken coconut soup

my soup and pad thai

yay for awesome friends and cooking class!

papaya salad and spring rolls

 after this, we were told we had a bit of a break. so we made our way to the covered gazebo area and relaxed. stephanie, lucia and i were talking about all sorts of things, including our ages. lucia asked me my age and i told her that today was actually my birthday and i was turning 24. nancy overheard me say this and said, "It's your birthday? Happy Birthday! Why didn't you tell us earlier that it was your birthday?" i didn't think it was important, so i didn't mention it. after our break, nancy came over with a plate of carrots and potatoes and told us we were going to learn how to carve vegetables into flowers. (while we were doing this, the second half of our group showed up. they were just taking the afternoon class). 

after 3 different attempts, my final product

i bet you can guess which one was done by the professional?

 vegetable carving.... yah that went over terribly. we carved the carrots into flowers and the potato slices into leaves for our flowers. it went over so terribly that i had to start over not once, not twice, but THREE times! it was terrible. terrible terrible terrible.


after the other part of our group finished their first part of cooking and vegetable carving, we moved back to the kitchen area and started with the fried vegetables. i chose the chicken with cashew nuts and fried vegetables. this was exciting because we got to use the wok and basically create fire. it was awesome. below is a video! again, nancy made everything so easy and it turned out great. after putting it in the dining area, we moved onto the curry paste. 

oh curry paste... you are such hard work to make. after putting all of the ingredients in the giant mortar, we took the giant pestle and went to town on pounding the ingredients into a paste. pound pound pound on and on. while we were doing this nancy told us in thailand, a way to tell if someone is going to make a good wife or husband is if they can make good curry paste. sooooo.... i was the first one to finish and as nancy was scooping out my paste into the bowl, she smiles at me and says, "You will make an excellent wife. good curry paste." and then proceeds to say, "i have a son. he is young, will you wait for him?" i laugh. just about that time a small child runs through and she points to him, "that's my son. he is 2. will you wait for him?" that became the joke for the rest of the day. 

curry paste before...

curry paste after...

vegetables and massaman curry

such good curry

 after the curry paste, we moved right into making our curry. i chose the massaman curry, because it wasn't too spicy and was a little sweet with the cinnamon in it. excellent. after we moved the curry into the dining area we went back to making dessert. 


mango and sticky rice is very high up on my list of favorite desserts of alllllllll time! sooooo good. we didn't make the sticky rice, it was already prepared, because one of the steps is letting it steam for 6 hours. so after the rice was prepared we put it in the pot with coconut milk and a little palm sugar. after we were finished, we went into the dining room and started eating again. so much food. 


as we were winding down, they brought out our cooked desserts. so so so good. while we were all talking and saying how we were all full, i heard the workers say my name and talking in thai. 

remember how i nancy overheard me talking about my birthday... well they went out and bought a small birthday cake for me. they put candles on the cake and everyone sang happy birthday for me! :) it was so incredibly sweet. 

happy 24th birthday to me!

we were each given a recipe book of all the recipes we cooked and they included the ones we didn't choose as well. we were also given a certificate of completion for the class! after we ate some cake, we packed up our very large amount of leftovers, said our thank you's and were driven back to our hostel. it was the greatest birthday i could have asked for in thailand! (at night we went to the night market and went shopping for gifts and things for ourselves. so much good stuff! ) 


i know i have said this about a lot of things, but if you ever get the chance to go to chiang mai, first you should stay at The Green Tulip House and you should definitely take this cooking class. it was amazing and totally worth it!