Thai Cooking School

One of the main tourist attractions in Chiang Mai are the dozens of Thai cooking schools, all of which offer slight variations on the same basic model. For between $25 and $35 dollars you get a market tour in the morning to buy your ingredients, and then cook 6-10 dishes over the course of the day, taking home a small cookbook of recipes.

After doing a bit of research we decided to go to "The Best Thai Cookery School" run by Permpoon Nabnian. Though we were already familiar with most of the basic Thai ingredients, it was still exciting to see how cheap, plentiful and fresh they were in the market. We saw the 3 major types of Thai basil, fresh turmeric root and galangal, fresh tamarind, young bamboo shoot, freshly grated coconut, and freshly pressed coconut cream.

Though we weren't going to be cooking any fish, I liked these fish ladies in the market.

Then it was back to the owner's house and our own individual kitchen stations.

First I cooked a Tom Yam soup and Jen cooked a tofu soup with a coconut milk broth. Then we made some spring rolls, a papaya salad, and sticky rice with mango, all of which we ate for brunch. Then we took a quick break to walk around their kitchen garden in the back and admire all their chili plants.

After our break, Jen cooked a delicious green curry and I did a Panaeng curry. We didn't make the curry pastes for these ourselves, but that's fine because we've done a lot of that before, and we have the recipes they used for their curry paste.

Here is a shot of Jen cooking her next dish: pad khi mao. (My noodle dish was a pad thai).

Though completely unnecessary, they thought a memorable way to end the last dish would be with a huge ball of flame.

They were right, it was a lot of fun =)

Here's the simple mixed vegetables that eventually emerged from under the fireball:

And Jen's dish of tofu and cashew nuts.

Finally, we sat down again to eat all our afternoon dishes.

All in all, it was a fun and delicious day, and we're excited to come back and set fire to all of your kitchens!