Taking a Cooking Class in Bangkok
making blue sticky rice
Picture this:
You just spent a day on a beach in Phi Phi, Thailand. Good, yes. But you were dumb, forgot to put on sunscreen, and you’re red as a lobster all over your entire body. You haven’t showered, so the ocean salt is still stinging your skin. You just had a huge fight in the airport with your travel companions at 3am. You boarded a 5am flight for Bangkok, dropped off your stuff at your hotel, and now it’s time to go to a cooking class with said now-estranged travel companions. You VERY MUCH do not want to go.
But you gotta. Cause what the hell else are you going to do? Pout? In Thailand?
That’s how I started this cooking class: furious, tear-spent, and as red as the devil in hell.
So when I say this was my favorite day of my 2019 Thailand trip, that’s how good this class was.
We met up at an MRT station at around 9am, running a bit late. We met up with two tour guides from Siamese Cookery House and a bunch of tourists, who graciously ignored our tardiness. We split into two groups of about six-to-eight folks, and the male tour guide (who I think was named Jay?) led our group of six down the road to the markets.
On the way, maybe because he could tell I was quiet and not speaking to my travel companions, he chatted with me about where I was from and the food from home I love. (Breakfast tacos. Tamales. Kolaches. Ahh, Texas.)
We arrived at a market with wide bowls stacked with bright spices, all sorts of roots and leafy greens, and fresh fish and frogs still swimming in shallow buckets.
Our tour guide began by explaining everything we saw, greeting the vendors as we went along. He gave us baskets and money to buy ingredients with, giving us pointers on what to get and how to look for it.
As we were shopping, one of the vendors, an older Thai woman sitting above her stock, pointed at me and told our guide that she thought I was beautiful and wanted me to marry her son. We laughed, and they joked about trading me for some of the vegetables.
After shopping, we took a short tuk tuk ride back to the house for our cooking class. It was two stories, split into several rooms, and apparently over 100 years old.
Out front on the porch was the range, with pans of oil already prepared. In the living room was a giant woven basket filled with spices and ingredients.
Our guide had us sit down and began explaining how to prepare our meals. The first course was pad thai, but we actually started with the dessert, since it took the longest to prepare. Jay threw some blue flowers in a pan and simmered it down until it became a blue stock. We then mixed it with uncooked rice and set that to steam.
We spent about fifteen minutes chopping garlic, bean sprouts, green onions, and peppers, chatting the whole time.
After we prepped everything, Jay took us over to the range and we threw in a bit of each of the ingredients. He helped us plate our lil creations, and we sat to enjoy the first course.
Nutty and noodle-y, you really can’t go wrong with pad thai.
pad thai, with peanuts, bean sprouts, fish sauce, rice noodles, egg, peppers and shrimp
Then we moved onto our second course: tom yum goong soup. That took little time at all, just throwing the ingredients together and frying them up until it grew fragrant.
tom yum goong soup, with shrimp, lemongrass, tamarind paste, thai chili paste, cilantro and more; sour and spicy.
I’d had a bunch of tom yum soup on this trip already, but this one was by far the freshest and tangiest. Jay told us that often times restaurants will skip the fresh tamarind paste and go for other methods to get that sour, distinctive flavor. So this was the real deal.
We ate our soup immediately and were already growing full, but then it was time to prepare the massaman curry with tamarind.
We each took turns using a mortar and pestle to grind the soaked tamarind innards into a paste.
Working quickly with the mortar and pestle used to be (and still is) a coveted skill in potential wives, our guide told us. Some of us were better than others. Jay was, of course, the most natural with it. I also did a fair job (not my first time using one, thanks grandma), and they again joked about trading me to that Thai merchant lady for more vegetables.
Finally, after our paste was made and the ingredients were chop chopped, we headed back to the range and threw everything in, starting with the paste.
massaman curry, with tamarind paste, tomatoes, coconut, sweet potatoes, chicken, and peanuts
This took a lot more time to prepare in total, and by the time we finished cooking the curry, it was time to prepare the mango sticky rice.
While our curries cooled down, we sliced up some mangoes, served ourselves some blue sticky rice and took photos. Then we stuffed our faces with curry and sticky rice until we couldn’t eat anymore.
blue mango sticky rice; the blue comes from blue flowers; served with condensed milk
Cooking classes are one of the best ways to learn more about a place’s food culture, and I can’t think of a better place to explore the food than in Thailand.
Despite being utterly miserable that morning, the cooking class lifted my spirits so much that this day actually became my favorite of the trip.
our ingredient book we received after finishing; it also comes with a certificate in thai cooking :)
It was also a great way to meet folks. I met an older Filipina woman who told me about how she uses similar ingredients back home. The other two girls were Korean—which I’d say is a neat coincidence but actually I meet tons of people who are Korean/live in Korea when I travel around Asia.
I fully recommend cooking classes for any country you go to, but especially Thailand!
I’m hungry, now. Thanks for reading.