Baan Thai Cookery School - Chiang Mai

Being so much fascinated by the Thai kitchen what else could be better thank staffing your belly with all sorts of culinary delights - as a matter of fact in Chiang Mai at the Songkran - on a street food festival: to learn preparing the dishes yourself. So I went out to look for a cooking school, which is plenty around here offering from day courses to 2 weeks long programs - and proving the deliciousness and healthiness of the Thai kitchen, they are very popular.

I choose Baan Thai, which means Thai home, as the school is located in a traditional Thai home with its old furniture and atmosphere. We started with a visit to the local market to purchase the ingredients for the 5 dished we were supposed to prepare during the day. The abundance of fruits, herbs and vegetables never seen before made me and my camera tick, so hopefully I can share a lot of pictures and try remembering also some of the names - as my parents are constantly questioning us about our diet; now here comes a full introduction.

We started with a Thai welcome snack, which was a fruit plate: honey mango, melon, rosy apples and lychee. Than we continued with preparing a Phad Thai, which is THE Thai fast food: rice noodles with chicken, egg, tofu, garlic, spring onion, bean sprouts and as most Thai dishes fish sauce, oyster sauce, cane sugar, lime and nuts. Do not get scared, I am not going to write down all the recipes, just wanted to give an idea about the basic differences to Hungarian Gulyas.

The feast continued with Tom Yum Soup - Hot and Sour Soup, Crispy Catfish Salad, Green Curry with Chicken and Rice and finally Water Chestnuts in Coconut Milk. Yes, we prepared this all for ourselves and we all ate them (Tomek got a belly squeeze from not being given a spoonful). And we had to prepare the green curry in a huge basalt mortar - even if at the end our chef admitted, that now knowing the usage of the mortar we can use a blender... But the most important spice we learned today was the smile, which has to be constantly on your lips, because Thais believe this gives the extra taste to the food.