A few months ago I discovered that there is a cookery school close to where I live. It advertises courses ranging from full chef's training to classes for 'helpers' (the term for maid) as well as half day courses in all sorts of cuisine including Thai, Singapore, Italian, French etc.
I asked one of my newly made friends if she would like to join me and together we choose to attend the 'Classic Thai Dishes' class.
On arriving we were given aprons, recipe sheets and shown to our 'station' where the ingredients and utensils were laid out ready for us. The three dishes we were going to cook and then eat were; Tom Yum Goong (a classic spicy lemongrass and prawn soup), Chicken Curry with Thai Aubergines and Pineapple Fried Rice.
Pretty quickly I realised that our teacher seemed to assume we all had quite a high level of cooking knowledge and expertise. I certainly didn't but my friend did and then she mentioned that she had a catering and cooking background! I felt rather embarrassed; fancy inviting an experienced cook to a cookery class?!
A number of the ingredients were new to me, I had heard of them but never cooked with them, including galangal, thai aubergines, palm sugar and coriander roots
Luckily my friend obviously knew exactly what she was doing and we started following the recipes with our teacher giving us instructions and tips as she passed by.
One of the main things that I learned was how important regularly tasting the dish is, after which there was the further addition of a bit more of either fish sauce or lime juice.
After a couple of hours we had our three dishes cooked and ready to eat, they looked wonderful
Our teacher sat with us and passed the ultimate compliment by saying our three dishes were the best out of everyone's there and really delicious. I have to say that most of this was due to my friend's expertise and fabulous palate but I like to think I contributed a little bit.
Fortunately there was more than we could eat and enough for us to both take home some of each dish to share with our husbands the next day- NT was pretty impressed and hopeful that I will learn how to cook more delicious local dishes.
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