Thailand, Part II – The Cookery Lesson!

8th February, 2019

OK, what else have we been up to here on Ko Lanta? Well, one particular high spot was our Thai cooking lesson at Time for Lime, which is, I think, an off shoot of the Lanta Animal Welfare centre and all of whose profits go to supporting this worthy cause, which looks after cats, dogs and other animals in distress on Ko Lanta and the surrounding area. So as well as learning something and having a fun evening, we were also able to feel good about ourselves!

We had eaten here the last time we visited the island and had liked the food and had witnessed the trainee chefs having a lot of fun, so we thought we would give it a go. We were picked up by tuktuk from the hotel (there is alcohol consumed, so no driving) and arrived to meet our fellow initiates at about 4pm as well as the wonderful Noi, who would lead us through the art of Thai cooking. He was very nice and very funny, as well as being knowledgeable and instructive, so we were well set for a fun evening. The other guests were a mixture of Canadians, Australians, an American, another British couple, a Czech and Slovak couple and a Taiwanese studying in Australia. Amazingly, no Swedes, Danes, Finns or Norwegians!! They had all arrived before us and had, we think, taken advantage of the Happy Hour(s), so were in a very convivial mood already.

The first item on the menu, Miang Kham, did not actually need cooking, but is essential nibble food especially in Northern Thailand. You take your Bai Cha Plu leaf (wild pepper leaf), fold it lengthwise and then fold it again to form a funnel and then add your ingredients and pop the whole thing in your mouth. Our ingredients included 12 leaves,  3 tbsp each of Thai red onions, diced ginger, unsalted roasted peanuts, roasted coconut flakes, dried shrimp and sliced lime in very small cubes with skin. To this we had 2 bird’s eye chillies sliced in thin rings and 5 tbsp of runny honey, which can help with tackling the chillies if you are not too good with them.

It is a great starter and we were certainly off and running. The crew was getting quite jolly already, helped by a few cocktails and a bit of North American bonhomie and we were keen to get stuck into the next menu challenge.

This was to make our own curry paste. Admittedly this would have taken rather a long time with us all banging away with your pestle and mortar, but we were shown what to do with the ingredients and exhorted that the difference between fresh, home-made paste and shop-bought paste is like NIGHT AND DAY!!! (Noi’s capitals). We were advised that all ingredients must be very finely chopped or it would take us 10 years to do it! The exercise benefits were emphasised, though the beer that was recommended as an aid to your 40 minutes worth of grinding and banging might negate some of that. For the record, for our red curry paste we needed black pepper corns, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, the edible bit of lemon grass, fresh galangal, kaffir lime rind, large red chillies (small chillies = very spicy, large = less spicy), coriander roots, shallots, garlic, shrimp paste and vegetable oil. This is what they looked like beforehand and a few photos to show technique.

Some useful tips were that if time is not with you for an evening of pounding (or if you don’t have a drink to hand), the trick is to pound the ingredients partially and then use a blender (but you will not get as good a flavour); and also, once the paste has been made, fill up an ice cube tray with it, cover with a plastic bag and freeze. Then pop out the cubes, place in an airtight container and pop back in the freezer. Good, eh? What was also good, was that we did not have to spend 40 minutes at the pestle and mortar as it was a case of ‘here is one I prepared earlier’.

Next up was Pad Ka-Praw goong or Shrimp with Holy Basil (St Basil, presumably) (haha!). The problem of doing this back home might be in finding Holy Basil apparently, but we will worry about that when we get there (Wing Yip to the rescue!). Lots of sauces for this – oyster, soy, fish – as well as garlic, chillies, cleaned and de-veined shrimps, onions, brown sugar and large red chillies. It is then just a matter of stir-frying pretty quickly.

We were going to enjoy that dish (no, honestly, we were) with some Tangy Coconut Soup or Tom Kha, which we prepared next, This was a bit more complicated and muggins here failed to follow instructions and mixed everything together from the start, but I don’t think it made a significant difference. It contained, as Noi put it, some ‘don’t eat me’ ingredients which are added for flavour (lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and bird’s eye chillies) which should be resting in the bowl once you have negotiated eating the soup – easier said than done! Anyway, it was all delicious and we were encouraged to make our dishes look pretty!

We were then able to sit down and enjoy our first two dishes – and another beer!

But there was no time to rest on one’s laurels (or even Holy Basil leaves!) as it was time to man and woman the pestle and mortars again to make our Tod Mann Pla or Fish Cakes with a ‘kick’. Ridiculously easy to prepare and only difficult to cook as you really need a deep-fat fryer, though a wok will probably be OK too.

Finally it was time for our last dish, Gai padt med ma muang – or chicken, chilli and cashew nuts. Some of the instructions are fun – “You really need all the heat you can get. If flames appear, don’t panic and throw the wok and run away. This is how it should be. But please be careful! Have a lid a bit bigger than the diameter of the wok nearby. If the situation gets out of hand, just cover the wok with the lid. Problem solved! It’s also a good idea to turn off the fire alarm and open your windows while making this dish.” I think the photos speak for themselves – we were not allowed to do the actual cooking, just the exciting and slightly worrying part of putting the ingredients in the wok and retiring quickly! Noi very gallantly did the ‘cooking’ bit for us.

And the end result????

And other than eating our delicious meal and quaffing another beer, that was the end of a very fun evening. I have all the details for all the dishes and a lot more from Noi, so do get in touch if you wish to know more and I will see what I can do.

I must record our thanks to Noi – he was the life and soul of the evening and a simply lovely guy.

Tuktuk home, shower and bed.