Cookery School – Day Two

Moved outside of the city today to carry on the course.  The school as a second site adjacent to the house of Sompon the owner.  Much nicer than being in the middle of the city!  Bigger and better facilities, the pace seemed a bit more relaxed and just to make the American girls day (and mine too I must admit) there were 4 stupidly cute puppies just willing you to play with them!

First was an introduction to Thai ingredients which was a bit of a bore to be honest, passing round bowls of rice and smelling fish sauce etc, but for people who know nothing about Thai food I would imagine it is excellent.  It was all done by a very funny Thai girl however so her constant jokes meant I managed to stay awake for the duration.

The first dish of the day was that most Thai of soups, Tom Yam Goong or Hot and Sour Soup with Prawns to you non thai speakers.  Sompon himself (owner, tv chef) led the demonstration in a thankfully air-conditioned room.  We all piled in after he had finished to see if his cooking matched his extremely impressive knife work, you will be glad to know that it did.  Bloody hot though, he had put seven birds-eye chillies in a soup made for one!  My attempt was pretty successful I must say, only used 4 chillies seeing as all I had had eaten so far today was a cup of coffee and a sweet basil leaf.  Definitely one to do at home:

Second up was Thai Fish cakes, again demonstrated by Sompon, who was loosening up a bit now.  Very easy to make apart from the actual cake making part.  We had to do it one handed and then slide the patty into the frying pan….it’s a bit hard to make something round and flat when the oil is spitting up at you!  Anyway they don’t look that great but they tasted fantastic.  I didn’t make the sauce and kind of spilled it over the plate a bit, apologies.

Third dish of the day was Green Chicken Curry.  The paste had already been made so it was basically a case of chopping up a load of ingredients, cooking them in coconut cream and serving it up.  Mine tasted ok, not as good as Sarah’s (that is a damn good curry I must say love) and thanks to the very dark paste we used looks kind of grey in the pictures!  When they cook curries out here, at least in decent places, they apparently use brass woks as the more even heat allows the curry to keep its color better.  Considering how much a brass saucepan is I don’t think I will be buying one any time soon!

For the last dish of the morning we did that backpacker favourite (mainly because it costs about 60p or less off the street) Phad Thai.  Basically fried noodles with peanuts and whatever else you want in there to bulk it up.  Not much explanation here and they tasted bloody good, better than the green curry actually.  The addition of sugar balanced the flavours out nicely.

The afternoon was taken up with a Minced Chicken and Mint Salad and a desert of water chestnuts with sugar syrup and coconut milk.  The salad was pretty tasty actually, if you put a lot more mint in there and boosted the flavours it would would be much better.  A big bowl of this stuff as a sport on tv snack would be great, make a change from sarnies anyhow!  The water chestnuts were really refreshing, really easy to do and the food colouring added to them looks awesome.

So I have one more day tomorrow and then I’m done, I might extend it to do the two final courses but I’m not sure yet, will see how I feel on the day.  And finally for the picture you all wanted to see from the beginning one of the puppies and Sompon chopping away at a cucumber.  More later!