Cooking Course in Chiang Mai + A Few Photos

So today was the first day of a three day cookery course I am doing in Chiang Mai, pretty cool I have to say.  Not having cooked a single thing for myself over the last 6 months my knife skills and gernal cooking ability was a bit bruised and battered but I got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Over 6 hours you cook 6 different dishes, eating each one after you have cooked it (missing out on breakfast was not a problem).

The day started with a lesson in vegetable topiary, as in those pretty little roses you see made out of tomatos are leaves made out of carrots.  The roses are actually pretty easy, a bit like trying to peel an apple without breaking the peel.  We then made a lotus leaf, again from a tomato which looked pretty cool.  I did fail first time on the carrot leaf though…..it looked like something that had been gentically modified to assume an appearence that was anything but leaf like.  My second attempt was a bit more respectable but still a bloody fiddily process.  They all made good decoration for my plate of spring rolls though.

First dish we did was a minced pork and glass noodle soup, very nice and suprisingly easy to make, only took 10 minutes of cooking once the ingrediants and been prepared.  After that was the spring rolls, seems the ‘pastry’ of spring rolls is very different to anything else but I guess the nearest thing in the UK would be a slightly thicker filo pastry, actually much thicker.  They came out pretty good and looked great next to my tomato rose/lotus flower: (sorry about the quality I forgot to change the setting on the camera):

 After that was my favourite dish of the day, a royal roasted duck red curry.  Rather than just the usual kaffir lime leavels, basil and eggplants (they have about 8 types over here) you had fruit in as well, grapes, pinapple and a couple of other bits.  Tasted fantastic after we had made it, presentation wasn’t quite up to scratch but who cares really?

The rest of the afternoon was taking up making a chicken and ginger stir fry, chicken in pandanas leaves and sweet sticky rice with mango.  Personally I though my chicken and ginger stir fry recipe was better but I will admit that theirs looked a lot nicer!

Can’t remember what I am cooking tomorrow but I am heading out to the guys house in the countryside rather than the restaurant kitchen in the city so that should be interesting.  Chiang Mai itself is nice, very calm and peaceful compared to the chaos of Bangkok but there is still plenty of nightlife knocking around and things to see.  Despite being much smaller than the capital, Chiang Mai has almost the same number of temples (300), went to a couple yesterday which you can see at the bottom of the page.  Will probably go out to do some trekking after I finish the cookery course but it is so damn humid up here at the moment, the threat of rain hangs over you from the moment you wake up until you step back into bed. 

Might go to see the Muay Thai boxing tonight but it is bit of a trek from where I am, from anywhere actually.  I have taken up walking everywhere again which is nice.  After being in Bangkok and Kao Tao where I either didn’t move around a lot or took tuk tuks it is nice to be using my legs again.   Have to do something to counter the effects of all the food I’m eating at the moment! 

So the photos below are of the Ko San Road at night in Bangkok, a very funny headline in the Bangkok Post newspaper, the beach in Koh Tao and one of the caberet act.  There are a couple more up on flickr but not many, haven’t taken many interesting pictures recently but I shall get back into the swing of things!

     

   

See you all next time!

xx