Day 101: It's cooking in Chiang Mai

We are getting a little short on sleep.... We will have to catch up soon or we risk some serious melt downs! We were up early again today, getting prepped for a full day cooking experience. Just outside the front door of our hotel, I heard monks chanting. A crappy picture, but it was a nice way to wake the mind up in the morning, watching and listening to the drone of the monotone incantations.... Love it!

We chose a cooking class hosted on an organic farm - we had to do a bunch of research as there are hundreds of cooking class options. I remember we did a class in '97 owned by a couple, the food and instruction by the Thai husband was great, but his American wife was a downer. We wanted some place this time that had a little of everything, and I think we made out alright.

Our guide, Prun, met us with her driver at around 8:30 and we proceeded to make a few stops, picking up a French couple who were stereotypically reserved and had very little English comprehension, an Italian couple from Florence who were stereotypically outgoing and friendly, and an Austrian couple who were stereotypically unabashedly curious and lively.

First stop? You guessed it - market tour. For us, it wasn't as interesting hearing about the differences in rice types and guessing what a lemongrass looked like (I admit it, we are now market know-it-alls.... All of us), but it was interesting seeing the differences in the market as we wondered around.

This market seemed like it was aimed at restaurants (lots of bulk ingredients like curry pastes and coconut milk) as well as a bunch of quick service food items, like this food bar...

The wet market area was pretty cool - it was the most hygienic by Western standards that we had seen. Not a fly to be seen, plastic slat entrance ways to keep it cooler inside, and many fans with cloths attached to the blades to keep bugs away from the meat. Very neat, calm and organized.

The prepared meat area had us salivating a bit, but we had to resist as we were quite sure we would have a full day of eating ahead...

Ok, this one calmed our hunger pangs - grasshoppers!

Just when we thought our appetites were gone.... They pull us back in!!! #watupgodfatherreference

Abby kept taking pictures of these colourful rice based desserts... She is constantly hinting that she is constantly hungry... Sigh.

Off to the farm! It was about another 45 minutes of driving, with Prun cracking us up with Thai style, laid back humour and the occasional snippet of song to get a point across "don't worry la, be happy la". She was pretty cute - though sometimes we got the feeling she was going through the motions a bit (she'd been doing the class for many years, deciding recently to reduce her workload to part time, so she could spend time researching food and "other things". How very Thai). She had, like so many other guides and people in the tourism industry we'd met along the way, a foreign boyfriend (this one a Canadian, which by her description we're assuming he had about 20-25 years on the 31 year old Prun).

The farm wasn't anything to write home about, just a nice, out of town spot. The outdoor kitchen setup was pretty top notch though. Before getting started on the food, we donned some really cool hats (so cool that it looks like Beth grabbed two, unless she thought this would give her double the sun protection.... No, because the girls didn't have 7 hats each... I'm not sure why she did that....) for a brief garden tour.

Prun did the usual "guess what this growing here is" game - I'm not trying to sound flippant... Just another reminder that we are know-it-alls. Even the kids aren't shooting their hands in the air with "Galangal! Some would say it tastes like ginger but most cooks who use both rhizomes would never substitute one for the other and expect the same flavor profile...err... like.... I think....", instead they're letting others guess and learn.

I won't bore you with all the details of the many dishes we made - you'll probably head to the nearest Thai restaurant before getting halfway done this post (I sent one picture to the Versly and got a message 20 minutes later that they'd gone out to dinner at a Thai place on Bloor!). In each of the six courses, we each had our choice of which course to cook, so we ended up making over 15 dishes between the four of us. Here are the highlights....

We started with Tom Yum Soup or Coconut Soup... Both very similar, both very good! I did shrimp... Yum!

Next up was some prep for later - we each had to take the necessary ingredients for our curry pastes. Most ingredients were similar but we added extra ripe dried red peppers for the red, large green chillies for the green and turmeric and coriander seeds for the yellow.

After some more prep for the ingredients for the curry dishes, we fired up the cooker. It was crazy to think that after the prep, most of these dishes took less than five minutes to cook - talk about fast food. Here are the three curries:

Options and more options. After covering the curries for later consumption, we quickly whipped up stir fried cashew chicken, stir fried basil chicken and stir fried sweet and sour chicken. Again, the sauces for these three were all remarkably similar - a small tweak here and there and we had completely different end products.

We polished off those dishes (just the food, we had the usual chorus of old ladies to clean up after us - it would really make cooking at home easier if you had a half dozen small, older Asian ladies prepping and cleaning up for you!).

Next up was Phad Thai (interestingly with molasses as one of the sauce ingredients - I would later notice this flavour in "restaurant" Phad Thai - I'm so disappointed I wasn't a 100% know-it-all!) and deep fried vegetable spring rolls with homemade dipping sauce.

We were thoroughly stuffed, but we kept on eating while Prun had Robin make us a spicy papaya salad at the head of the table. Also, amazing!

Just to prove how gluttonous westerners can be, Prun had us make one of two desserts that of course we immediately consumed. Beth made bananas in pandan leaf flavoured sweet coconut milk.

The rest of us made sticky rice soaked in sweet pandan leaf coconut milk, topped with mung bean seeds for salt and crunch and served with mango. Amazing.

It was a very good course and a great way to spend the day. They gave each of us a professional looking recipe and spice guide book which is great. We drove home (I missed a shot of Beth's head bobbing in the van within minutes of leaving the parking lot - it was pretty priceless.

As soon as we got back, around 5:00pm, Beth ducked out for an hour massage, and the girls were in bed for a nap. We had plans later so they needed a little cat nap. Cat nap indeed! At 7:00, we could barely get them up - their bodies were in it for the long hall, but we had some boxing to check out - Muay Thai boxing.

One of the many local Thai kickboxing places is about 10 minutes from our hotel. Based on my research, they were real fights (not made for tourist fake fights) typically with younger guys on the card until you got to one or two major fights at the end. We paid for VIP seats and got front row in the 800 person capacity makeshift "arena".

The research proved right. The fights were great and it was fun to see the girls watch the pageantry of the whole fight - the cool ring entry routines, the in-corner fighter/trainer repartee, and the tradition of the victor paying homage to the loser at the end. Some of the younger fights were quite good - lots of action. In the end, we only saw one fight that went the full five rounds - with the other 6 going down as knock outs. The only thing I didn't totally understand was when the judge could quickly end a fight after a knockdown and when he allowed the opponent to get back up and fight again. The one female match was pretty good, though there was a lot of grappling.

There were a couple of intermissions - one where two guys demonstrated the traditional Muay Thai fighting that featured each guy holding two short swords.

There was also a cheesy "5 guys with blindfolds" fun match. Hey, it was made for tourists, what can I say.

The final match featured an Italian fighter against a local guy. Unlike the other weight classes - 112lbs, 120lbs - this was the 167lb class. I managed to get the end of the fight on video. Let's just say I don't think the Thai fighter had seen so much hair on a human before as he looked pretty intimidated by the Italian!

We had a ton of fun at the boxing - one of those all round great travel days.... One of many now really. The girls were pretty pumped up (mark her words, Robin is going to take up martial arts when she gets back!) when we got back, and no one got to sleep before midnight or so. We are all very excited to see some elephants up close tomorrow!!!