These were the helpful reminders from Noi, one of our instructors, in the day-long Thai cooking class we'd enrolled in at Apples Guest House in Kanchanaburi. It had been a busy morning of instruction before we'd actually been given the go ahead to start cooking. Our day started with a bicycle ride to the local market (This time Heide managed to ride her bike without skinning her knee like she did on Rottnest Island. See: April 22, 2004) where we learned about different Thai herbs, fruits, vegetables, and meats. The market tour took almost 2 hours and was extremely informative. We tasted different types of curry paste, learned how to peel a Rambutan, and were given a few pointers on how to "cut the corners" in preparing Thai food -- what could be purchased pre-prepared and what must be done fresh in order to get the best flavor.

Once the market tour was over, our second instructor, Apple, gave us a quick run down of the key ingredence of the Thai kitchen. Fish Sauce, Palm Sugar, Regular Sugar, Peanut or Vegetable Oil, Oyster Sauce, Chili Oil and Coconut milk are just a few of the things that the Thai chef should have in his or her kitchen. We were told about the best brands and advised on where we might find these things in our home countries. We also discussed the key flavors of Thai cuisine. Spicy, Sour, Salty, and Sweet work in combination to create meals with a variety of flavors. Although there are allowances for individual taste,  everything should be a harmonious combination of these 4 flavors,... a rule which is apparently violated by all those foreigners (we confess, like us!!) who order everything spicy with "5-stars."

Then it was time to cook! We were divided into two groups (our course contained a group of strict vegetarians and a group of meat eaters) and asked what we wanted to prepare. Everyone was going to make Pad Thai... ours with chicken and the vegetarian version would be sans meat and fish sauce.... but that meant that we could choose any 5 other dishes that we wanted to learn. Mark and I are huge fans of Thai food, so you might think that choosing just 5 dishes between our group of 4 people may be a challenge. However, because so many of the "types" of dishes are made using the same methods. Curries, for example, will use different curry paste and perhaps slight differences in the key inputs... but the methods for cooking would all  be the same -- and that's what we really wanted to learn!

In the end, our menu included:
Chicken Pad Thai
Beef with Oyster Sauce
Jungle Curry with Chicken
Tom Yam Soup  with Prawns
Red Curry with Chicken & Bamboo Shoots
Stir Fry Pork with Chili and Basil

According to Noi and Apple, we'd chosen a few too many "spicy" dishes to be a perfectly balanced Thai meal, but given that we "loved spicy" and that the menu we'd chosen is what we *really* wanted to learn... we were given the go ahead. It was fantastic! Apple showed us how to chop the vegetables in the "Thai way" and then demonstrated the cooking method of the dish we were working on. Watching the demo, everything appeared remarkably easy to prepare. However, although we took copious notes... when it was our turn to have a go at copying Apple's example... our dishes were "close" (and very good!!) but somehow not quite perfect. Side to side tastings would show our mistakes -- Not enough water added at the right time to the pad thai,... More fish sauce to balance out the extra chilies we'd added to our Tom Yam and don't burn the garlic!! Our instructors assured us that these are normal mistakes that we will overcome with practice....

And practice is what we look forward to doing when we finally make it "home." We have a wok somewhere in storage (A wedding gift from Heide's cousins - Eric & Karen!) and it will certainly get much use as we perfect our Thai cooking techniques! Anyone interested in a Thai food dinner party sometime in mid to late 2005??