Learning to cook... Thai!

It was a full day deal. We started be being picked up at the apartments and then getting a tour of the market. It is the same market that Dad goes to about once a week for fresh veggies and fruit. They've not attempted to buy meat there yet though.

This is our driver/guide and one of the chefs that taught us. He pointed out some of the differences of things that you don't get in the US that they use there and some of the things we would be using that day.




Yes, these are really bugs (the middle ones are grass hoppers)! Yes, they are really fried! Yes, they really do consider them delicacies! And no, I didn't try any!!

These weird looking fruit in the middle that are red are called "dragonfruit". I did try some of it and it wasn't bad.

Here we are actually cooking (Mom, me and Dad). All the prep work was done for us, so no slicing, dicing, etc. We sat at a big table in the middle of the open air kitchen and they talked us through the recipe, then we all went to one cook station and they showed us how to do it, then we all went to our own cook station with our ingredients ready and did the cooking for our own dish. There were a total of 8 dishes for the day - we did before lunch and ate them, the 3 in the afternoon we took home with us for dinner!

These are the 5 dishes prepared and ready for eating lunch. The top left corner is fish cakes, the dish to the right of that is chicken with cashews (this was my favorite of the lunch dishes). The bowl to the left is Tom Yum soup (not sure if I spelled that right) which is normally very spicy - one of the nice things about cooking your own, leaving out the "spicy". Next to the left is sticky rice and on the very bottom running off the pic is the fish souffle, with the last bowl to the right being the chicken curry.

These are the spring rolls we did in the afternoon for taking home (mine are the third from the left in the top row)!

This dish they told us about and showed us how to make but we couldn't do individually because there are no small squash to do them with. It's steamed custard in pumpkin (it's more like squash than our pumpkins) and it was very yummy. The last dish we did and took home was Pad Thai and I didn't get a pic of it. All and all a very excellent class and really a lot of fun!!