We spent two days in Chiang Mai learning about the 4 “S” of Thai cooking: Spicy, Sweet, Sour and Salty

Arriving in Chiang Mai, expectations were fairly high as everyone talks about how great it is here. Walking through the “old town” we had a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about. First, there isn’t really an “old” town, just a bit of old walls around a very touristy place, crowded with guesthouses, massage places and bars/restaurants. To be honest, we preferred the feeling of Bangkok, even though it’s busier and more polluted. I guess it’s a pretty relaxed place, with no high rises, and there are loads of temples scattered around the town.

The main reason people seem to come to Chiang Mai is for all the organized activities: elephant treks, elephant shows, jungle canopy adventures, rafting, cycling, treks to hill tribes, and on and on. These things didn’t interest us very much, but we were interested in…cooking classes!!

After browsing through some brochures (there are tons of cooking schools in Chiang Mai), we settled on a two day course covering all the dishes we know (not many, I admit).

Day one of the course we got picked up at our hostel and whisked away to the local market for a tour and introduction to the ingredients. On the way we came across a parade in the street with lots of dancers:

Here our instructor shows us kaffir lime and lemon grass:

Different kinds of rice. The very white stuff at the front is sticky rice.

”Thousand year old egg” - really only one month old but aged covered in ashes til it turns into a jelly. We tasted it later in the day…

After the market we headed over to the school. There were only five people in the class, so it was all very flexible, sometimes everybody cooked the same thing and sometimes we split into different groups.

The first dish was hot and sour prawn soup. Here Roland removes the vein of the shrimp:

Our soup:

Next was spring rolls:

Showing off our craftsmanship:

Raat demonstrating the green curry:

Chicken and cashews:

Here are the famous thousand year old eggs again, in a spicy sauce. Not the most delicious…sort of a rotten taste, as you might expect from a month old egg…

Green papaya salad (notice the lovely tomato rose garnish!):

Dessert - steamed banana cake:

After six dishes we left the school totally satisfied and stuffed, and excited for day two!

This class was curry making, so we started the day banging on stone mortar and pestles to make the paste for our penang curry.

The ingredients for the paste:

The dry ingredients:

The fresh ingredients:

The curry paste we prepared can be used for different purposes: to make a panang curry (here with pork)…

…but also prepare the peanut sauce in which we can dip our barbecued chicken satay

We also cooked some spicy pork with basil…

spicy pork salad…

And, of course, the pad thai! here are the ingredients :

Kath trying not to burn her omelet

We got various results…

We definitely recommend the cooking class we were in: the Thai Orchid cooking school.