Asia Scenic Cooking Course

After our arrival from Bangkok to the much more peaceful Chiang Mai we all (me, Jh, Lee and Tooley) decided to do a Thai cooking class with Asia Scenic Cooking School after it was recommended but the lady who ran our hostel.

We were picked up at our hostel at 9am, I say picked up we walked the 5 minutes to the cooking school and already I think we all knew it was going to be a good day, especially with our great teacher Mam.

We sat around on the table on the traditional Thai cushions with the other 5 poeple in the group and all decided on seven dishes out of a selection of twenty, with on eof the dishes being the paste for the curry.

I chose: Spring Rolls, Pad Thai, Stir Fried Chincken with Cashew Nut, Coconut Milk Soup, Panang Curry and Banana in Coconut Milk for dessert.

Jh chose: Spring Rolls, Pad See Uw, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Tom-Yum Soup, Penang Curry and Deep Fried Banana (what a surprise.. anythink deep fried!)

We began by making our noodle dish, so for me the Pad Thai and Jh the Pad See Uw, we were all given an aporon and a shown to our stations where there was a chopping board and a huge meat clever waiting for us.

The preparation didn't take long and each ingredient was put into a different catagory: Strong flavour, vegetables, meat and mild flavour. Then off we went to our woks, where we split up depending on your chosen dish, me and Lee were both cooking Pad Thai.

We had to remember the different heat levels so we knew when to change as Mam gave instructions and also remember that when she called our 1, 2, 3 it meant: 1tsp sugar, 2tsp fish sauce and 3tsp soy sauce. Then, FLIP AND STIR, FLIP AND STIR!It was so fast paced that in five minutes we were dishing up and sat around the table, I added some lime (no chilli) and I have to say it was delicious despite my liberal hand with the water, so much so that Lee called it a soup whilst we were cooking(haha).

Next we prepared the Spring Rolls which were to be filled with diced chicken, tofo and vegetables (carrot and bean sprout). We were each given a pastry square each, which you could say is cheating but the preparation takes hours. We had to put the pastry square man side up (the rough side up) and then we were taught a technique to make the rolls look prettier. The Austrain girl accross the work station said mine looked the best :) ! We all queued to fry our two spring rolls and they were each checked by Mam, to make sure not only that we had folded them right but to check the lady (smooth side) was on the outside of the roll. All but one were correct from the seven of us who did Spring Rolls.

Served with Sweet Chilli Dip - Scrumptious!

Two other people decided to do a Papaya Salad which looked great, the colours made it a beautiful dish.

We were given fifteen minutes to relax before we had to start making our remaining dishes that we would eat all together.

We started by making the paste for our curry. Ours (mine and Jh's) started as Red Curry Paste, bashing away at the chilllies in the pestle and mortar until it was smooth along with other ingredients also (Jh did a good job but I wasn't great at bashing the chillies as we were told we couldn't grind.)

To make our Penang curry we simply added peanuts and ground them up with the red paste. The spiciness depended on the amount of paste you decided to use, mine would be a mild Panang and Jh's medium.

We continued the preparation of the stir fry, soup and dessert.

After we had all completed our preparation we went to our cooking stations to firstly make our stir fry dish, Mam was there to lead us all through desptie cooking separate dshes, we all finished and continued to make our curry. They all smelt amazing and we just wanted to sit and eat but hte soup had to be made and the only thing I remember is ... NO STIRRING.. As you don't want the flavour of chicken, in my case I wanted a coconut flavour.

The dessert was much simpler. Jh, Lee and Tooley all did fried banana so they made the batter and simply fried them. I just had to warm coconut milk adding palm sugar to taste and a little salt to to take away the sweetness and add chopped bananas.

FINISHED. DINNER IS SERVED.

Everyone sat around enjoying their meal and we all passed arounf our dishes to those who had made different dishes so actually got to try nearly all twenty dishes available to make. There was so much, I'll even say too much to go around and I don't think a single person touched the plain rise in the middle of the table, it was all good enough to eat with out and so delicious but so much!

Fantastic experience at Asia SCenic Cooking School, I hope you're all ready for a Thai banquet when we get back!