Back in October, once we had established our “vacation” location as Thailand, we decided that our third stop would be Chiang Mai, a city in in the northern part of the country. We’d heard about people who had come here to work with elephants and build a school and we knew there would also be some jungle hiking to do. While formalizing our plans, Gayle decided that a Thai cooking class would be an excellent opportunity to learn not only about Thai food, but to embrace the culture a little. After scouring the reviews on Trip Advisor, we booked a 1/2 day class with the Smile Organic Farm Cooking School.
We departed in a van with a few others at about 8 am. Our first stop was a local market, where our guide gave us a tour of the stalls - explaining what each sold. The farm was supplying all of our food to cook, so, in order to keep the Thai economy flush, we purchased some donuts!
  |
Upon arrival, we found our kitchen and our group of 10 new friends and donned our aprons. Lilly toured us around the garden and we finally had a much better sense of what we have been eating for the last week. (The delicious green balls are actually a type of eggplant and there is a type of basil that is very spicy - ask Paul - he still remembers both his ears burning as he could barely speak after chewing the basil!)
Next it was time to chose our menu items - one curry, one soup and one stir fry. Gayle selected: Hot and Creamy Soup, Red Curry, snd Pad Thai, while Paul chose to make a Panaeng Curry, Hot and Sour soup and a cashew chicken stir fry. Since we always share anyway we got to try 6 new dishes!
To get us started, Lilly demonstrated the ingredients, cutting and wok techniques as we all took turns helping to make spring roll ingredients. Next we, were sent off to our woks to start chopping and cooking. Within minutes the heat was on - Paul even lost some hair on his fingers!
Lilly was amazing. For each course there were 4 different dishes being made - add in one vegan and one fish allergy and she had her hands full. She expertly directed us, even giving different groups code names to keep us organized. She told us the order to add things, when to turn the heat up and down, and most importantly didn’t let us burn anything!
After making and eating all of the stir fry, we made the soup and curry. We were pretty full so we took most of those home with us to eat later. One of the bonus features was that we didn’t have to do dishes!
We both commented about how well put together the whole thing was. The script, the pace and the supports were all smooth and well-oiled.
