One thing which was making me nervous before traveling to Thailand for four weeks, was the Thai food. Although I am definitely not a fussy eater, Asian food has never been my favourite. Luckily, the Thai street food made it easy. No vague menu’s and not really knowing what you order, but having a live view of what you will be eating. Soon, I loved the Pad Thai, the Spring Rolls and especially.. The banana pancakes! It wasn’t so bad after all. Therefore we decided, after having done an amazing pizza baking class in Rome before, to do a Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But this time to discover the amazing Thai kitchen. How fun is it to be able to bring back a souvenir for friends and family in the shape of a delicious plate of Pad Thai?
The cooking
class
Doing a cooking class was a sort of last minute idea as we only booked it the
night before. This because we actually wanted to visit Doi Inthanon, Thailand’s
highest mountain. But because I got very carsick the day before, we decided not
to drive through the mountains again. There are a lot of different cooking
schools in Chiang Mai, so it was a bit overwhelming. After having done research
online on many different schools, we booked the cooking workshop with Asia
Scenic Cooking School. We could make the decision whether we wanted to cook for
a full day, or just half a day, and whether we wanted to cook in the city or at
the farm. We decided to go for a full day at the farm. This was a decision we
did not regret. Although both experiences would have been really nice, we had
the feeling that the cooking class at the farm was less busy. Furthermore, did
we also visit a local market and we had a little tour through the herb garden
in order to see where all the food we were using came from. This was already a
very nice start to our day. 
During the
class we all made 6 dishes. We made a stir fried dish, spring rolls, a curry
paste and then the curry, a salad, a soup, and a dessert. Per dish, except for
the spring rolls, we had three or four choices. I chose to make the famous and
delicious Pad Thai, the Papaya salad, the Tom Yum soup, the red curry and the
delicious Thai desert Mango Sticky rice. Unfortunately I did not like every
dish (read: I did not eat the Tom Yum Soup and the Papaya Salad), but that will
probably either be my cooking skills or me not liking spicy food. In between
all the cooking we had an hour off in which we could relax in the beautiful
garden of the farm. At the end of the class we all received a little cookbook
with the recipes of all the dishes we could have made. It was a real success as
I already made a home-cooked Pad Thai twice!
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More information
For the full day of cooking at the farm, we were picked up from our Chiang Mai hotel at 9 am. and got back around 5 pm. The price for the class is 1200 Bath (which is around €32,-), and includes transport, food, water and the cookbook. Please note that Asia Scenic Cooking School is not the only cooking school in Chiang Mai, however, it is the only one we have experience with. Therefore, we would recommend you this school, but that does not mean that other schools are any less. For more information on this particular cooking school, check out their website: http://www.asiascenic.com/
We really
enjoyed this day of cooking in Thailand!
