Chiang Mai, March 30th ~ No visit to Thailand would be complete without a five-hour culinary class. Our day at Thai cooking school began with a tour of the market, a truly remarkable consortium of rices, grains, noodles of all sorts both dried and fresh, ground curry and pepper powders, vegetables, spices, herbs, teas, fish and crustaceans, alongside other goods. Most were lose and sold in bulk, many unrecognizable to us. The locals meander from one merchant to the next, procuring a bit of this here, some of that there. It's "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker" style of shopping on steroids. We loved it.
We returned to the cooking school, a short walk from the market, toured their modest garden, donned our aprons and got to work. For the next four hours, a group of about 10 of us chopped, prepped and prepared (in woks over open flame burners on a covered outdoor veranda) various soups, assorted curry dishes (grinding ingredients such as cardamon, cinnamon, star anise, spicy hot peppers with a deep stone pedestal and mortar into pungent, colorful curry pastes), the most divine vegetable spring rolls, main dishes like pad thai, gaeng keow won kai and pad krapow moo saap, and a delightful leaf wrapped hors d'oeuvre. Without doubt, the best meal of our trip. We left happy, satiated and with a cookbook, hoping to tempt friends and family to visit us in Annapolis.
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| A stroll to the market. |
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| A happy sous chef plying his new skills. |
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| Curry powers at the market. We ground and ground and ground our own. |
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| Market offerings. |
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| And more. |
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| Some of the few prepackaged dried herbs, spices and teas. |
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| If it's not here, it doesn't belong in your kitchen. |
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| Outdoor cooking area. |
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| Path through the small herb and vegetable garden. |
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| Four kick-ass curries. |
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| Promoted from sous chef to chef. |
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| One happy campers. |
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