Candid Like Love

"Photos should be candid - like love!" - high school David

Wednesday morning was our last in Chiang Mai, so we packed up our bags, bid farewell to Stella (a giant presence, and one that grows on you over time), and hopped on another small bus to our cooking lesson at Thai Orchid Cookery School.  Our teacher, A, came to pick us up since we were the only students for the day (the class size ranges from 2-10, and it's the off season so 4 was not that surprising).  A took us to a marketplace where she explained Thai vegetables and cooking, letting us taste, smell, and feel different ingredients that we would be using or which are commonly used.  (An extensive record of marketplace lessons will be included at the end of the entry.)  The market was lovely, full of fresh produce, smoothie stands, and soup packets (specific ingredients tied together with string, which together are used to make soup and which cost about 5 Baht or $0.17).  We purchased our ingredients and were then given a few minutes to stock up on fruit, nuts, and the like for our long night and day of travel to Cambodia.

From there we traveled to the school building, a cool oasis with a soundtrack of trickling water from a fountain.  A covered outdoor space hosted the cooking stations, an indoor room was set up for us to eat our dishes and relax between courses, and a third room had chairs arrayed in front of another cooking station with a mirror on the ceiling so that we could watch what was happening in the pots and pans.  On the bus ride over, we had split up every dish offered between the four of us, so we got to watch A prepare everything.  We also got to try each thing and then split up to make the dishes ourselves.  None of the boys had taken a cooking class before, but they seemed to really like it.  Chris was excited about making these dishes over the summer and perhaps next year.  We made appetizers (spring rolls or chicken satay with peanut sauce and cucumber salad), soups (clear or creamy Tom Yum Goong or chicken with coconut cream),  curry paste (red or green), curries (green, yellow, panang), entrees (pad Thai or chicken with cashews), and dessert (steamed banana cake, Thai pancake, or mango with sticky rice).  We also got fresh fruit and papaya salad delivered to our table during various courses.  Needless to say, we were STUFFED but so happy.  We had each gotten to try everything and left with recipe books full of handwritten notes.  A was a lovely teacher, and I was glad that we had her all to ourselves.

After class, A dropped us off at the train station with about 40 minutes to spare.  Chris, who is on a constant quest for Thai massage, set off with David to see if they could get 30 minutes of relaxation somewhere nearby.  Nicolas and I moved everything into our train car (air conditioning! Comfortable chairs that turn into beds!) and waited for our companions.  They arrived moments later, un-massaged. Apparently they had tried to explain that the only wanted 20 minutes but the women insisted on two hours, even when Chris acted out train noises and motions to indicate they had to leave.

We had great neighbors on the train: two girls from London who are about 20 and an older woman (late 30s, early 40s?) from California who we chatted with for quite some time.  Then when the beds got made and seating became trickier (3 of our 4 bunks are upper bunks, which are not conducive to group conversation) we all moved onto Nicolas's lower bunk, two of us with our backs on each end of the bed and a tangle of four pairs of legs in the middle.  I'm so glad I'm traveling with the right kind of people.  We eventually moved to the dining car so that the boys could enjoy their beers and we could eat our enormous stashes of provisions (including a bag of sugar- and sesame-coated peanuts that was so big we called it "The Infinity Nuts").  The dining car has disco lighting, a DVD of American pop divas live in concert with the volume turned up on high, and an odd assortment of occupants.  We nabbed a table, talked to our neighbors, and then shared funny life stories until they kicked us out.  The train cars are apparently locked at 11, so we had to get back and snuggle in.

Note: the difference that air conditioning has made to my comfort on this return trip is absolutely incredible.  I will never again take it for granted.  The trip up to Chiang Mai was fun but having your own horizontal bunk with AC can't be beat.

Spotted: no ovens in Thai houses.  According to A, it is too hot to have an oven in your house in Thailand, so all baking is accomplished through steaming.  For the steamed banana cakes, we used fairly typical baking ingredients (flour, sugar, etc) but steamed everything to cook it instead of baking it American-style.

Market run-down: (for my own memory)

Bitter melon looks like a long, pale cucumber with raised ridges running down it, lengthwise.

There are three types of peppers used, listed here from smallest to biggest (and hottest to mildest): birds eye, jalapeño, and finger peppers.

Dragon fruit is pink on the inside when it is small and young and turns white on the inside only when it matures.

Panang curry powder is made from nutmeg and is added to red curry paste to make panang curry.

Yellow curry powder is made from turmeric and is added to red curry paste to make yellow curry.  The turmeric adds a vibrant color but does little to change the flavor and is more of a decorative flourish.

Coconut cream refers to the 100% pure product squeezed from ground coconut meat.  Coconut milk is coconut cream cut with water in a 50/50 mixture.  Labeling in the US often mixes the two terms.

Ear mushrooms grow on the ground and both look and feel like ears.  They don't add much flavor, but become crunchy in soups.

Pink eggs are Thousand Year Eggs, or raw eggs buried in mud for a month or longer, then dug up, boiled, and dyed to distinguish them from other eggs.  Despite the dark brown color of the inside, they taste just like normal boils eggs.

In a Thai marketplace, chicken eggs are brown, duck eggs are white, and quail eggs are a all and speckles black.

Thai ginger both looks and tastes different from the type we use in the West.

Kaffir lime and is leaves are useful in cooking.  The leaves are commonly used in green curry.  The fruit can be used for flavor but is too bitter to eat.

Thai apple eggplants are small, round, and green and are apparently crunchy and sweet just like an apple.

Baby eggplants are the size of large peas and are has for flavor but are not eaten because they are very bitter.

Basil comes in several varieties: sweet (with purple flowers), lemon (with green flowers and a citrus scent, commonly used in soups and sweets), and hot (larger leaves, only spicy after cooking).

Rice comes in two varieties: jasmine (clear grains that turn white when cooked, used in savory dishes in Thailand) and sticky (white grains that turn clear when cooked, used in sweet dishes in Thailand, eaten at every meal in Laos)

Tilapia can be red or black, and are kept alive in water until they are ready to be eaten.  Then, they are gutted, stuffed with lemongrass, and grilled.  Catfish are cheaper but are not considered as tasty.

Palm sugar is basically like maple sugar, especially in its rock form.  Sooooo yummy.

Red and green curries differ in the type of pepper used.  Green curry uses green peppers (and sweet basil leaves), while red curry uses dried red peppers (drying makes the color more vibrant).  Green curry paste is hotter, but less is often used in recipes.

Pad Thai noodles are made from jasmine rice, while glass noodles are made from the mung bean and are a Thai diet food.

Straw mushroom look like little gray-tan pods and grow on top of hay.  Once cut in half, you can see a more typical mushroom shape inside, surrounded by this capsule.  They are DELICIOUS in soups.