Every one who visits Thailand raves about the food. So while we were backpacking across the ‘Land of Smiles’ we were determined to bring a little bit of Thai cuisine know-how back home with us – at least enough to impress our friends!
After checking out some reviews we joined a day course at Thai Farm Cooking School. It’s quite a large enterprise but the classes are kept small keeping that personal touch, so the overall experience was just superb.
For your 1300 Baht (£25 ish) everything is taken care of for you – you’re picked up from your accommodation, driven to a local market to collect some fresh ingredients (which is an experience in itself!), then off to the rural farm where you can collect the rest of the ingredients and get cooking!
Local market to collect ingredients. We avoided the deep-fried insects.
Back to the farm to pick some fresh herbs.
Throughout the day, we tackled a range of items which we pre-selected from the menu. Each person gets to prepare a curry paste, a chicken curry, a stir fry, a noodle dish and a traditional Thai desert. We were fortunate as, because there were two of us, between us we could tick almost everything off the list and try it all! Here are the options you’re given:
- Red curry paste / Green curry paste / Yellow curry paste
- Red chicken currey / Green chicken currey / Yellow chicken currey
- Tom Yam soup with shrimp / Tom Koa with Chicken (coconut milk) / Thai vegetable soup
- Chicken with cashew nuts / Sweet and sour chicken / Basil chicken
- Spring rolls / Pad Thai fried noodles
- Bananas in coconut milk / Mango and sticky rice
Red curry paste.
The finished article – Thai Chicken Curry.
Beni attempting a group selfie.
The class, hard at work.
The location is beautiful and the cooking is relaxed and designed to be very straight-forward, so much so that any enthusiastic amateur can throw together some tasty dishes. If you’re lucky enough to have Beni as a tutor, then you’ll probably have a good laugh along the way too.
