Chiang Mai - Cooking Class
Our flight to Chiang Mai was only an hour. We picked our luggage and headed outside and found a couple of taxi drivers who would take us to Le Meridian. Our driver spoke English very well and told us all about the great things to do in the area. Then he suggested that we hire him for the next day to drive us wherever we wanted. We took him up on it. Le Meridian was great — Especially with Brian’s discount and the ability to visit the club for breakfast and refreshments throughout the day. Boy that was awesome!
We had about 10 minutes to drop our bags off in our room and get back to the lobby to meet Noon for our ride to our Thai cooking class. So much fun!!
Noon drove us straight to the market and on the way we filled out a little questionaire about what things we wanted to cook that evening. For me: fried rice, papaya salad, coconut soup and green curry. : ) It was fun wandering around the Market with Noon. He first took us to the spice table and had us smell different spices, some awful shrimp paste and even little mini dried shrimp. It was fun to have his explanations and insight. He had us wander around and bring back any questions we had, which was fun. It was a great little market.
The red eggs above are Century Eggs. Century eggs also known as hundred-year egg, are a Chinese preserved food product and delicacy made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash and rice hulls underground for several weeks to several months. Through the process, the yolk becomes a dark green to grey color and the white becomes a dark brown, translucent jelly with a salty flavor. They dye them red so you can tell the difference. No thank you. Below, in the middle is Durian — named in some regions as the ‘king of fruits’, the durian is distinctive for its large size, strong odor and thorn-covered rind. The aroma is overpowering and lingers for several days which has led to its banishment in certain hotels, transportation hubs, and airports in southeast Asia. We smelled cut up chunks through a thick plastic wrapping and it was pretty bad. We saw signs all over the airport saying ‘No Durian Allowed’. Pretty funny.
From the market we hopped in the back of Noon’s truck and headed for the Baan Thai Cooking School. We traded our shoes for indoor slippers and donned our aprons - which was much more amusing than it should have been.
Chris and I made fried rice for our first course — delicious! The rest of the trip we compared the fried rice to the one we made this night. Chris kept saying, “Well, this fried rice is ok, but not as good as the one I make.” The whole night he kept commenting on what a great cook he was when they had everything prepared and ready for him and they told him exactly what to do. It was so fun.
For our second course Chris and I headed to the downstairs kitchen to make Papaya Salad. We shredded green papaya and carrots and added some sauces and spices and then pounded it in a wooden bowl. We could add as much spice as we wanted. Chris added 3 green chilis. I added 1/3 of one red chili. Chris couldn’t even eat his, it was so spicy. So he shared mine.
Third course was Coconut soup and it was delicious!! After each cooking session we headed back to the Dining Room to enjoy our food. After our third course we were really full! For our final course, I made Green Curry and Chris made Panang Curry. Both great, but we were all so full it was hard to really enjoy it! Our cooks were fantastic and the whole night was just perfect.