Cooking With Gas

About five years ago I took a cooking class with a friend of mine's wife. She's an excellent chef and had a number of friends pestering her about where to take some casual cooking classes. Finally she broke down and bled each of us of our hard in dough. For years I've boasted about the beef wellington I made one of those fine saturday afternoons in her kitchen.

Today I tried to revisit that dream. I've talked and talked and talked about doing this, but I finally went and took a thai cooking class. There are a number of places in Chiang Mai that teach thai cooking. Thru recommendations it boiled down between two places. Thai Farm Cooking School, where they take you out and show you where all the food comes from. That one takes up much more of the day so I decided to get my feet wet first with Pad Thai Cookery School.

They start with a tour of one of the larger local markets and go thru all the herbs, fruits & vegetables used in thai cooking. Then off to their school to try putting some of those things together in pleasing ways. Hopefully to resemble something along the lines of pad thai fried noodles, spring rolls, green curry with chicken, chicken with basil leaves, ginger chicken, a variety of thai fruits, and banana in coconut cream. Mmmm... mmmm...

I've proven to myself that I can make these great thai dishes, but what it really takes in repetition to make it second nature. Night after night of toiling away in the kitchen, looking over Sow's shoulder and making sure she gets it right.