Up until last week, I hadn't seen Tal, one of my closest friends, for 2 1/2 years. She lives in Israel, and I in the U.S., so it's not easy to get together. However, her family just moved to Thailand, and mine is finishing up their post in Taiwan, so this Christmas we grabbed the opportunity to make the relatively small hop to see each other.
Her family knows me so well. While I was visiting them, they signed us up for a cooking class at the Thai Cooking Academy! We had a really fun time learning some new Thai dishes and making new friends.
We met our group and teacher at the metro station, then walked together to a nearby local market where the teacher explained some Thai ingredients to us. I hadn't realized before how many ingredients were so specific to Thailand! Replicating some of these dishes will be a challenge.
After seeing the market, we walked a few minutes down the road to the Thai Cooking Academy. We had already picked out the dishes we were making, and they had the ingredients waiting for us by our stations, ready to chop up. We each made five dishes, and there were about four options to choose from for each dish. I made massaman curry, pineapple fried rice, stir-fried vegetables, coconut chicken, and mango sticky rice. All of the dishes I made were beyond delicious--except the coconut chicken (granted, I don't really like coconut and I'm not really sure why I chose to make it).
I was afraid that all nine of us making five different dishes would be chaotic, time-consuming, and confusing. However, the teacher named each dish and which ingredients to chop up as we went along, so it was clear what to do and we were busy most of the time. A few ingredients the cooks helped us cook or chop to save a bit of time as well. While chopping, we had plenty of time to chat with the other people taking the class, which was fun because we had a very international group.
Once everything was chopped, we went over to the cooking stations and made our dishes. The desserts we mostly watched how to make. It only took a few minutes to fry everything up, then we got to eat! We made so much food, some people opted to take leftovers home, but I was starving and lacking self-control after a few hours of chopping and smelling food. I devoured everything I made, except, of course, the coconut chicken.
All in all, I would do this class again in a heartbeat. The teacher had good English, was very helpful and knowledgeable, and it was an organized and fun class with lots of different dishes to choose from. Not to mention good food! The dishes were fairly customizable to individual tastes, and we were given the recipes afterwards. It ended up being about three hours total, and required only basic skills. Hopefully I'll be able to replicate some of these dishes at home!
Thai Cooking Academy Links
Official website: http://bangkokthaicookingacademy.com
TripAdvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293916-d2037980-Reviews-Bangkok_Thai_Cooking_Academy-Bangkok.html
