40 days into our epic SE Asia adventure and we had eaten amazing things in 7 exotic countries.

40 nights into our epic SE Asia adventure and I missed cooking.

I met up with Leanne and Kathy, the lovely Australian sisters from our tour, for a cooking class at Baan Thai Cookery School in Chiang Mai.

At Baan Thai, I cooked and ate 4 dishes at one of their evening classes.

Chicken pad thai (fried noodle dish), Seafood in coconut milk soup, Green curry with chicken and fish cakes.

The green curry was the best green curry I have ever tasted. It was the last dish of the night so I had a pretty good idea of how much curry paste I liked by then. This was spot on. The instructors will encourage you to use plenty of chili and curry paste, but hopefully you know what you can handle and can be firm about how much you want to use in your dishes. You’re the one that has to eat it after all.

My finished products:

Market Tour

I was looking forward to the market tour, shopping for ingredients is a big part of cooking. Gei, our instructor walked us through a local market, identifying and detailing everything that we might cook with in class.

Like fresh noodles and fresh tofu.

Eggplant. I like how Gei points to the eggplant. If she wasn’t pointing, who knows what we might have assumed?

Ginger, turmeric, finger root and galangal. Can you tell these apart?

I love these pre-cut soup bundles. No need to buy a whole turmeric or a whole galangal if all you need is a slice.

Some pre-made foods. A soup or a curry?

Snacks. Maybe you need a sack of chips? You don’t need fancy labels when you can see what you are buying.

Fresh fish. No refrigeration.

Cooked fish over coals.

Our eggs come in trays. These come in plastic bags.

Baan Thai Cookery School

Shoes off!

Leanne and Kathy.

A plate of edibles we didn’t have to cook.

My prep for the Pad Thai.

Already prepared vegetables for seafood soup.

Ingredients for fish cakes.

Be careful with this stuff. It smells amazing, but it’s pretty spicy.

Fish cakes being deep fried.

Ingredients for a green curry. I love fresh baby corn. I’d only ever had them squeezed from a can.

All the aromatics to go into the green curry paste.

Pounding the curry paste. The peace sign hand would usually be used a shield against the paste. Flying bits of curry paste is not good for the eyes. Smash carefully.

Thanks Gei!

Baan Thai take of photos of their classes which they post on their website. I’m looking pretty happy in this one.

Cookery School Tips:

1. There is plenty of time to eat between cooking. Don’t try to scoff everything in under 2 minutes. Honestly, I don’t know why we did that.
2. Put as much chili and curry paste as you can handle. No more!

Cookery School Highlights:

1. Cooking and eating delicious food.
2. Their recipe book. All the recipes are in there so if there was anything that you wanted to cook but didn’t get a chance to you can cook it another time.

Baan Thai’s website can be found at www.cookinthai.com.

Address:11 Rachadamnern Rd. Soi 5 T.Sriphoom A.Muang Chiangmai 50200
Tel: (Domestic) 0-5335-7339 or (Overseas) +6653357339