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Jungle Curry
One of the best things about Thailand is the food.
It is so ridiculously good but always harder to re-create at home. So being food lovers and keen cooks we decided to go to a cooking class.
The course was at a place called Siem Rice. On our way we stopped off at a food market where we were shown all the local ingredients we would be using during our class.
There were also some interesting sights such as fried chicken heads, fried worms, fried bugs, fried chicken feet etc. The Colonel had better watch out.
We arrived at Siem Rice and were joined by about 10 women, something they all found highly hilarious probably not realising that I'm outnumbered on a daily basis. It was like being at work all over again.
They were a mixture of Canadian, American and English of all ages and seemed nice.
We were given a choice of soups, salads, noodles and curries to make and just had to pick which type to create our custom menu.
I chose Spicy Sweet Basil soup, Holy Basil salad, Pad Thai noodles and Panang curry. Alex went for Coconut soup, Glass noodle salad, Drunken noodles and Jungle curry. The announcement of a Jungle curry being made was met with gasps, laughter, crossed fingers and crossed chests. Apparently it was going to be hot. Really hot.
We made our way into the outdoor kitchen where we each had our own work surface and stove - which were arranged in a square so we all faced each other.
Our teacher, Pot, was a kind, funny man with an odd wispy beard growing from his neck - something strangely common in Thailand.
He talked us through the ingredients we would be using for our individual dishes and we started on the soup. After cooking and then eating our soup it was on to the interesting part, curries. We were to make the paste from scratch with each different curry needing a different amount of ingredients and most importantly chillies. One of the American ladies didn't like spicy food, onion, chilli, pineapple or spring onion, making most of the lesson pointless, as she wasn't actually cooking Thai food. Odd.
She put one minute chilli in her Masaman paste when normally you use 8, I had 15-20 in my Panang and Alex was told to put in, gulp, 55! 55 chillies is insane.
We all made our pastes using a pestal and mortar and made our respective curries. The frying of Alex's was burning everyone's eyes it was so strong. What was it going to taste like?
We then made the noodles and salad and sat down to eat.
The curry tasted amazing. Better than any Panang I had tasted in Thailand, the same went for the Masaman, which is my favourite. It all tasted great. Even Alex's homemade bomb tasted good, two spoonfuls was probably enough though.
The best thing being given a recipie book to take with us so we can make it when we get back. The only thing that won't depress me about going home. I bloody love Thai food.
To cap the cooking lesson off we found out Pot had 3 day old puppies. They were cute an' that.
The same evening we visited the night market near the old fort. I desperately needed some t-shirts as my decision to only bring two - I brought 5 vests, naturally - seem to be a school boy error. I ended up buying two that represent Thai beer companies. It's got to the stage where beer represents me best. Damn you Asia and your affordable beer! Soon I won't even need a t-shirt to show my love for it, the bloated belly and face will cover that.
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