All Summer Long

As I’m sure you all already know, me and Paul love food and it’s played a massive part in our round the world adventure. Can you imagine our excitement when we discovered Chiang Mai had a lot of cookery courses?

We luckily got a cancellation of 2 places as it’s a very popular day out! We were picked up at 8am and went on our way to pick up the other 8 trainee chefs before heading to a local market to be told about the different ingredients we would be using. We had 5 minutes to go to the toilet and have a snack so me and Paul grabbed a very quick espresso to help perk us up for the long day ahead.

We finally arrived and it was much bigger than we thought it was going to be. It’s based on an organic farm so they grow all of their own produce and have a few different classes on everyday. Our teacher was called Kim and she was so lovely and friendly; we knew we were in safe hands.

We started off by walking around the farm in our aprons and hats. We certainly looked the part.

All the ingredients were picked here and discussed in detail. One poor girl in our group believed the guy who said, “that chilli isn’t hot” and took a huge bite out of a dynamite chilli. We didn’t see her again for a while.

Now for the cooking! It does seem a bit daunting at first when the realisation that you’re going to be stir frying next to and opposite complete strangers sets in. This gives us a new found respect for GBBO and MC contestants for sure! Anyway, we quickly realise that it’s okay and everybody is: A. In the same boat and B. Really nice.

We begin with the curry paste and as I imagined, I’m not the best with the pestle and mortar and am one of the last to finally get the okay from Kim to put my curry paste in the dish for later – phew! I am now roasting hot with a very achey arm so I just ignore it and drink the free lemongrass tea they supply.

Now the worst thing has happened, I’m hungry. Those of you who know me well, know that I don’t cope well with hunger. I am a Frodsham after all. I wish this had kicked in earlier when I was bashing my spices. I probably would’ve been much quicker.

We chopped all of our veg for our tom yam soup and split it into little groups to go in the pan at different times. Time for the hobs! Kim shows you what to do first and lets you try hers so you know how it should taste – then it’s over to you! Armed with my Casio. I time everything to a tee. If she said stir for 20 seconds, I did just that. No more, no less and it worked! It was all so quick but my word it tasted good, and just like Kim’s. Paul also did well with his soup but his only regret was he went for tofu rather than shrimp. The shrimp was awesome!

We ate our soup then moved onto the spring rolls. We pre cooked the vegetables in the wok then split them into 2 groups for our 2 spring rolls each. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and you just have to make sure you roll the pastry very tight so no filling spills out. If you manage that then it won’t go wrong. The sweet chilli dip was epic and I’m going to be making batches of it as soon as I get home!

The eating and cooking continued with a red chicken curry (mine), a green chicken curry (Paul’s) and stir fried chicken with cashew nuts. Everything went swimmingly thanks to our teacher and previously prepared curry paste. It was worth all the hard work!

By this time we were insanely full but what about dessert? Mango and sticky rice (you see this everywhere in Thailand) was on the menu and we were shown how to make the rice blue by using a flower. It doesn’t add any flavour, just colour and can also be used for decoration. We were left to our own devices when it came to presentation so being the big kid I am, I made a face and Paul made a pattern. I wasn’t quick enough with the camera though and Paul had already started eating his before I got a proper snap. Anybody would think he hadn’t been fed!!!

Now that was definitely it for the food because we were absolutely stuffed! The day was a huge success and I would definitely recommend it to anybody as it doesn’t matter at all what your cooking skills are because the teachers are so good. Plus you get a lovely recipe book at the end to keep. Anybody up for Thai food when we get home?