Thai Cooking 101

This week, I have been volunteering to teach English at Sirimangklajon primary school and, in the evenings, I have been taking a Thai cooking course at Siam Rice Thai Cookery School with chefs Nancy and Pot at their house just outside of Chiang Mai’s city center. The organization I am volunteering with arranged a one-hour course for us last Friday morning to learn how to make curry paste. I liked the approach, the atmosphere, and the cooking so much I decided to book a week long course. I had also seen enough brochures to know that all of the comparable cooking courses had very similar menus and also slightly higher prices. In the end, because the school I was volunteering at was closed on Friday and because I got sick on Thursday from the papaya salad I had during lunch and had to cancel that evening’s course, I ended up with two evening courses and two full day courses. My secondary motive was to work on improving my tolerance for spicy foods. My husband loves spicy foods and enjoys making Indian curries among other things at home. We have been limited, though, in what we try when eating out and what we prepare at home because of my complete lack of tolerance to spicy food. That is slowly changing.



An unexpected bonus of the class has been meeting so many great people. Each day, I take the course with new students. And, unlike with the volunteering and in my hostel, most of the other travelers are in their mid-twenties to early thirties. The clients’ focus tends to be more on bringing something new to their kitchen tables to liven up family meals and dinner parties. Most are also much more open to new flavors and curious about indigenous ingredients.


On Tuesday, I had a great time getting to know a couple that I will call Mr. & Mrs. Foodie. The British-American couple in their mid-late Thirties knew every herb and vegetable Pot showed us in our tour of his neighborhood market. My first thought was, “These people should be on Master Chef or Hell’s Kitchen! They really know their food!” When I asked Mrs. Foodie if she was a chef and how she knew so much about food, her response was, “We just LOVE food.”


They immediately started trying food in the market and bought a piece of Chiang Mai sausage that they offered to the rest of the class to sample. It was delicious! I had seen Chiang Mai sausage in various night markets, but had been intimidated by its large, half pound, pinwheel shape. I knew I would not want to eat that much of a food even if I did love it. And, living in a guesthouse, I do not have easy access to a refrigerator so nibbling on it over several days was not an option. I immediately liked Mr. & Mrs. Foodie.

I started asking them what other food they’d tried in Thailand. They started rattling off nearly a dozen different dishes. After make a quick mental inventory of the new food I had tried in my five week stay and coming up with about the same number, I was shocked when they said they had been in Thailand for four days. They are taste tourists! Their enthusiasm, curiosity and openness to answer even my most basic food questions really empowered me to try all the foods I had been cautiously avoiding. I stopped pretending to have the same food phobias as my fellow university aged volunteers. Granted, I had many of the same aversions to seafood, herbs and most vegetables at their age so I pass no negative judgment, but it does not mean that I need to limit my experience to accommodate them.

That evening, I made vegetable spring rolls, hot and sour chicken soup, sweet and sour chicken stir fry and a green curry. I enjoyed the spring rolls and green curry the most. Surprising, at least to me, is the frequent use of tomatoes in Thai cooking. I do not think of tomatoes, for no real reason except for their prevalence in my upbringing in the Midwest, as a tropical fruit. I also do not particularly enjoy tomatoes. It is part of my texture neurosis. Unless they are stewed, diced within a centimeter of recognition, or pulverized into a paste, I am not really interested. Unfortunate for me, Thai cuisine limits the amount vegetables and fruit are cooked to enable them to retain their flavor and texture. As a result, most of my tomatoes have found themselves relegated to the edge of my plate when we taste our finished dishes.


Something else I do not normally enjoy is eggplant (aubergine for those not tuning in from the U.S.). Again, it’s the texture. Rather than the purple zucchini-shaped (courgette) vegetable I am accustom, a Thai eggplant looks like an egg – a pale green one, at that. Paired with the barely there cooking method and the much more dense composition, I actually like Thai eggplant. The eggplant, along with carrots baby corn, thai basil, and kafir lime leaves are diced and accompany the green curry paste, coconut cream, fish sauce, and sugar. Green curry paste is made by pounding in a mortar green chilies, shallots, garlic, galangal (Thai ginger), fresh turmeric, and shrimp paste. Typically, a Thai person includes ten tiny, fiery green chilies in their paste. I was proud to include two.

For the vegetarian spring rolls, we sauteed the stuffing of tofu, garlic, shallots, scallions, Thai ginger, shitake mushrooms and bean sprouts in a sauce of soy, fish, and oyster sauces, lime juice and sugar. We then wrapped a brimming tablespoon of stuffing tightly inside of a square of rice paper sealing the roll with egg before frying them in hot oil. Along with sweet chili dipping sauce, they were crispier and tastier than I had had at most restaurants.

The sweet and sour chicken was another story. Again, there was the tomato gate crashing and now also a cucumber, another texture nightmare. There was also a noticeable absence of breading on the chicken, the sauce was watery, and the secret to the tanginess was a big dollop of ketchup. This was not your Chinese take-away sweet n’ sour chicken. Yes, I know I am not in China, but I really didn’t expect tomato and ketchup. I set it aside after sampling it. As for the soup, more barely cooked tomato along with not so finely sliced (my fault) strips of the very fibrous Thai ginger (much more fibrous that it’s more popular cousin). I stuck to the very tasty sour broth and chicken.

For dessert, I fell in love. I apologize. I must be watching too much of the hyper-dramatic Thai soap operas that are impossible to avoid here. For dessert, the chef made us sticky mango rice. It is the best thing since sliced (dense brown Dutch) bread. I did not particularly like mango nor did I particularly like rice pudding (umm, texture, again) before arriving in Thailand, but I love this dish. If breakfast weren’t included in my room rate, I would seek sticky mango rice out every morning from a street vendor or market stall. Last night, I actually walked nearly two miles in pouring down rain until I found a stall in the Night Market selling the creamy, perfectly sweet dish. I can’t really explain why I like the dish. Please just try it.