Thai Farm Cooking

Today was a full on day of cooking and learning. It was an early rise at 7.30am and needless to say it was a struggle getting up as I haven't seen that time on my clock in a while.

Picked up at 8.30am by our cooking instructor for the day, her name Garnet, we set on our way collecting others from the group along the way. Our first stop was at a local food market which Garnet toured us around explaining about various foods such as rice (the difference between sticky rice and normal rice) as well as the variety of coconut products such as the cream, milk and shavings and their different purposes. Garnet was so enthusiastic this whole time, so excited by the food and from then on I knew it would be a good day. Before leaving the market we were allowed 10 minutes to wonder around for ourselves and pick up any food or drink we wanted then headed on our way to the Thai Farm Cooking School.

The cooking school was a good half hour drive from the main centre of Chiang Mai but was in a beautiful rural location, their farm surrounding the buildings.

First up was preparing our curry paste from scratch. I had chosen yellow curry and using a pestle and mortar crushed all the ingredients to make an amazing smelling paste which would later go in my curry. Our first dish was coconut soup, being slightly apprehensive about how good mine would taste I was pleasantly surprised and it was absolutely delicious.

Next up was the spring rolls, and I have to admit I thought I did a pretty great job of them. As well as looking good they tasted amazing. It was accompanied as well by home made chilli sauce which too was incredible.

Already feeling stuffed, we still had two other dishes to make, the curry and stir fry. For the stir fry I used to learn the wok and felt pretty proud of myself when I managed not to spill everything everywhere or burn any of my ingredients. Both the curry and stir fry took no time at all and soon it was time to eat them. Being so tasty, it was still a struggle to eat them both having already been so full. Nevertheless I powered on through and managed to eat most of what I made.

Then, last up was the mango sticky rice and my oh my was it delicious. Having never tried this dish it was so yummy. We even got to turn our rice blue, which I thought was pretty funky.

With bellies bursting at the seams, it was time to head back to the hostel after a great day. With happy food baby's we settled in for an early night.Read more