Thai Cooking Class!

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Jan 4th
Ashley here

One of the things we were most excited about doing in Thailand was taking a cooking class, and we found a great place to do it in Chiang Mai!

I think it was called Thai Cookery

So excited to start cooking!

For $30 each we were able to pick 6 dishes to learn to cook, got to stuff our faces, and got to walk around a local market with a really cute basket where we picked out our ingredients. It was awesome!

Shopping in a local market with a basket.  Dreams really do come true!

The only lame part was that we had to spend the entire day hanging out with an eclectic group of semi-annoying fellow travelers.  All of these day long excursion situations are super hit or miss.  For example- the elephant thing was extra awesome because we were in a group with a bunch of really fun people who made me cry laughing the entire time, and cooking class was only a regular amount of awesome because we were in a group with some too cool for school Americans (some of the only Americans we've seen actually!) and one of those really annoying people who is constantly adding in extra facts when you're not even talking to them... 'Oh yeah! This is Thai basil-you probably haven't seen it before. Did you know the Thais and the Vietnamese went to war over a dispute involving ginger?'  Blah, blah, blah.  It was really annoying!  But aside from our classmates the cooking school was really great.  The teachers were awesome and everything was super clean and the food all ended up tasting delicious!  And this wouldn't be social media if we didn't post tons of pictures of it, right?

My "green" curry (no spice)

Kim's green curry- super spicy!

Sauteing baby bananas for dessert

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Chicken fried rice- even easier to make than the soup!

Making chili paste from scratch

Kim enjoying the fruits of her labor

The most important thing we learned is that Thai food is super easy to cook.  I know!!  I was shocked too!!  Now put down that take out menu (or popcorn and wine you were about to have for dinner) and chef yourself up a delicious Thai meal instead.  Below I'm including the recipe for my favorite thing I learned to make.  It's that coconut chicken soup you can get at any Thai food place, but I swear it's even more delicious when you make it yourself, and I think it took maybe 10 minutes to make?  Oooh maybe I can be the next Rachel Ray!  Ten Minute Thai Meals.  Yumm-eeee!

Some of the ingredients

Chicken and Coconut Milk Soup (Tom Yum Gai)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups coconut milk (you can do half coconut cream and half water to make this)
1/2 cup of coconut cream
4 slices of galangal (thai ginger- but regular ginger works too!)
A few lemon or lime leaves
A handful of oyster mushrooms
A couple green onions diced up
A quarter of a white onion diced up
1/2 a small tomato
2 Tbs of lemon or lime juice
1-3 tiny red chilies depending on how spicy you want it
1 and 1/2 Tbs of fish sauce
Fresh cilantro to garnish

Directions:

1.  Put coconut milk in the wok and add the chopped ginger. green onions, regular onions and tomatoes
2.  Add the chicken and cook until tender
3.  Add the mushrooms then the think coconut cream, lemon leaves, and chilies.  Cook for another 4-5 mins
4.  Take off heat and add the lemon or lime juice and fish sauce
5.  Be impressed with how quickly and easily you just made that awesome soup!  And if it doesn't taste good blame me and look up a better recipe online :)

Yumm-eeeee