You are here: Home / Archives for cooking

Thailand Tuesday: Cooking School Edition

February 15, 2011 by 25 Comments
tt_snacks

Hello! Double post today–this never happens. Check out my v-day pictorial if you’re in the mood. It. Is. Delicious.

Anyway, I don’t really do well on the blog with posting constantly or with regular features (case in point: the second installment of my Five Faves Friday was a “Saturday Edition”--that about sums it up). But I realize that I have SO much awesome otherworldly (so to speak) content that I haven’t featured on the blog yet, and with the fear of turning into a cookie-cutter copy of a ton of other (awesome) bloggers… I really need to make myself get this stuff up, because I want y’all to see it! (If I get through Thailand maybe I can start a Vietnam Vednesday and a Cambodia… I got nothing.)

Anyway, quick precursor: I spent a few weeks in Thailand in November/December and got to do some pretty amazing things. I figured, this being a travel/food/happy blog after all, that I could start out with something near and dear to our hearts: cooking class in Thailand!

I went to Thailand with very few concrete plans besides a flight into the country, and one of the only things I knew I simply HAD to do was take a cooking class (or three) in the beautiful northern city of Chiang Mai. There are a ton of options, and we decided to go to Baan Thai Thai Cookery School. (“Baan” is Thai for house/home).

We were taking class with a group of people from all over–the States, Canada, Slovakia, Scandinavia… Thailand definitely attracts travelers from all over the world. Our first assignment was to pick which dishes we wanted to cook.

Easier said than done. There were SO many choices and of course I wanted to learn how to make everything, but I ended up choosing the spring rolls, the pad thai, the hot and sour soup, green curry with chicken, and mango with sticky rice for dessert.

After making our choices, we took a “field trip” to the local market inside Chiang Mai’s old city (the center of the city is surrounded by moats and a city wall. It’s awesome. Will post more about it later.) Here we got a lesson from our teacher about the principal ingredients in all Thai cooking. The produce and random fruits and fish and herbs there was just incredible.

We had some free time to wander through the market, and of course I grabbed a Thai iced tea (strong, with a ton of condensed milk and sugar–love it) and some peanuts glazed with something delish. Total cost, one dollar. This is why Thailand is my favorite country.

When we got back to the cooking school, we relaxed on our cushions while the staff prepped the ingredients, and we got to enjoy a tasting plate of thai snacks. Check this out.

We have (clockwise from left): two small oranges/tangerines, Thai version; java apple; Thai grapefruit; some sort of plum/peach I’d never seen before; Thai rice cakes; sesame balls (my favorite! I think it was taro or sweetened red bean paste which was then fried–delicious) and lastly, an unnamed snack made of sweetened fruit and sticky rice wrapped in taro and then rolled in coconut (if anyone knows the name, tell me!) plus similar sweet peanuts in the middle.

I wish every day started like that.

We learned about the basics of Thai cooking–the seasonings (soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, mushroom sauce, shrimp paste… a lot of these smell NASTY but are soooo good); the spices (coriander, cumin, cadamom, anise, bay leaves, thai garlic) and herbs and veggies (thai ginger, a ton of different type of chilis including “mouse shit chili”, keffir lime and leaves, lemongrass, several kind of eggplant).

The first course was the pad thai. We started preparing our ingredients at the table (wouldn’t it be great if all cooking started like this?) and then went over to our personal woks to do the cooking. After a short demo, we were turned loose.

I learned a ton of new things today. We cooked everything but the noodles in the wok, then just smushed them up to one side, added some water and cooked the noodles right there. Super easy and quick.

Yes, I made this.

(I made the mistake of eating most of this because it was around lunch, failing to recognize that I’d be cooking myself several MORE meals in the next few hours–needless to say, a ton went untouched, and I’ve got a HUGE appetite. Today I met my match.)

Thai cooking tip: if a recipe calls for fish sauce or oyster sauce, USE IT. While salt and soy sauce are touted as substitutions, it WILL taste much different. These sauces smell pretty horrendous out of the bottle, but they add a rich, salty, and distinctive flavor that is crucial to an authentic Thai flavor.

Next up were the spring rolls, which were much easier to make than I thought. Make filling, put in rice paper, roll up and seal with some water, drop in vat of boiling goodness, consume.

One of our teachers also friend the small Thai bananas and shared them with us, and me being a lover of all things banana (and all things fried), rated it two big Thai thumbs up.

Then it was time for hot and sour soup, which I thought would be complicated and filled with oil. Neither! Pretty easy.

Believe me when I say that the apron adds twenty pounds. But it was the only picture of me from the day (albeit unattractive), so here it is. (Actually, after this cooking class, maybe this is an accurate shot…)

The most complicated recipe was the green curry paste. It had a ton of ingredients that needed to be mixed and mashed and it was a group effort, for sure!

But the results were absolutely delicious.

The last course (yes, we were all barely able to stand up at this point) was dessert. I went with the mango and sticky rice and was NOT disappointed. I had heard this was a classic Thai dessert and I was skeptical, but I tried it very soon after I arrived in the country and almost died of ecstasy. You sweeten the rice with coconut milk and palm sugar and with the mango… man.

This was an amazing cooking class. I learned so much and now am totally not intimidated of Thai cooking. I wish I had gone to a class every day I was there! If anyone goes to Thailand, you HAVE to do this–the entire day was maybe $30 for all the food and an 8-hour experience and it might have been the most expensive thing that I did when I was in Thailand.

I leave you with a Thai recipe! I have several so let’s start with a classic.

Phad Thai (fried noodles) recipe courtesy of Baan Thai

Ingredients:

  • 250g rice noodle
  • 50g chicken in small pieces (or can sub textured soy or vegetable protein)
  • 3T oil
  • 20g spring onion
  • 1t sugar
  • 2T fish sauce (can sub soy sauce)
  • 2T oyster sauce (can sub mushroom sauce)
  • 1 egg
  • 30g bean sprouts
  • 1T chopped garlic
  • 50g tofu, cut into 1cm cubes
  • 1/2c water

Directions:

  1. Heat oil over low heat, add garlic and fry til fragrant
  2. Add chicken, tofu and stir until the chicken is cooked
  3. Break the egg in and spread around with the chicken
  4. Add noodles and water, stir until tender (push the other stuff up on one side of the wok so the noodles can cook in the water)
  5. Season with the fish sauce, oyster sauce and sugar
  6. Add bean sprouts and green onions/chinese chives
  7. Turn off heat
  8. Serve with fresh vegetables (cabbage, bean sprouts, spring onion) and garnish with lime juice, grounded peanuts and chilis to taste.
  9. ENJOY!

Have you ever taken a cooking class?  What is your favorite Thai food??

  • SIMILAR POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE . . .

    Share
    • Filed Under: Pancakes (Food), Postcards (Travel) Tagged With: , , , , , ,

    The Five Emotional Phases of Marathon Training, Phase 1: Honeymoon

    February 6, 2011 by 20 Comments
    sat1

    It’s the weekend!!! And I haven’t posted since Tuesday. I vowed to never apologize for not posting because I think it’s weird and pretty self-absorbed to think that anyone’s life would actually be negatively affected by not having a daily post from one of the blogs they read! But it’s been a crazy week for me, with some school stuff and a bunch of JOB INTERVIEWS (real world! Duh duh duhhh!) going on. But here I am. :)

    Digging this Saturday. I was just driving around with my moonroof open and the temp gauge in my car read 71. WOOO! And I set a new PR for a 5K this morning. Life’s goooood.

    I loved reading comments on my last post about the Vegetarian Kitchen Challenge and so I’d like to give some VKC updates. It’s going pretty well! I’m on a Veganomicon and quinoa kick this week so the recipes I chose reflected that. First up was a chickpea-quinoa pilaf, recommended by Jess over at Healthy Exposures. This was my first time EVER cooking with quinoa (!!!) and it was AWESOME. I dig.

    BLOG CLICHÉ ALERT!!!! Check out my new bowl from Sur La Table. Isn’t it just like OMG the cutest bowl everrrrr?!?! :) :) :) at least I’m not so cliché that I posted a picture of it with my morning oatmeal.

    Whoops.

    I couldn’t cook much during the job-app days (more like eating my way through San Francisco yet again) but I tried to keep the veggies up. Remember that weirdly deformed sweet potato I got at the farmers’ market? It finally got cooked. This baby was so weird looking that I had to make a smiley face on it out of dried fruit. Don’t ask why. It just seemed right…

    I continued the challenge with my new favorite grain, using a recipe that really caught my eye: quinoa salad with black beans and mango. Basically this was a ton of mango, red bell pepper, green onions, cilantro, quinoa, and black beans all tossed with some oil and vinegar.

    It was good but it needed a lot more vinegar and some salt added to it afterwards to suit my tastebuds. (But the original recipe also called for red wine vinegar, which I didn’t have, so that’s probably why. Improvisation.) I also think my mangoes weren’t very flavorful, which was weird because they looked and felt PERFECT, and I had a lot of experience picking out mangoes after my days in the Moz. Oh well, still good!

    And dinner last night was something I had been excited about trying: lentil sloppy joes, or snobby joes! I would definitely recommend this recipe. I’m not so veg that I preferred it to the ground beef version (though Lord knows when I last ate that!) but it was great. Open face all the way.

    Just like the real sloppy joes: nasty looking in the pan, DELICIOUS on the bun.

    I’m continuing my VKC through the weekend by making black bean burgers either tonight or tomorrow, and creating a delicious (vegan) super bowl feast with green pea guacamole, white bean aioli, spinach and asparagus dip, and black bean/sweet potato tortillas. More on that later.

    ***

    So for any of you actually reading this post you might be wondering what the title has to do with anything. Here’s the explanation.

    For those of you who have been reading my blog, you know I can be a bit sarcastic, and it’s the way I deal with difficult things, such as marathon training (and you all know that my marathon training started without me. Devastating.) So here I present my analysis of what I am calling the Five Emotional Phases of Marathon Training. “Is this a real thing,” you ask? Of COURSE it’s a real thing! I have a BLOG, therefore everything I spew about in this little corner of the interwebs must be 110% accurate and true. I’m ashamed of you for even asking.

    Thus I present the first of the Five Emotional Phases: the HONEYMOON phase. (What are the other four? Couldn’t tell ya. I haven’t made them up yet.)

    For me, the honeymoon phase lasted through this Monday. Three and a half solid weeks. Marathon training, for many people, starts in a flurry of excitement. You’re motivated and positive because you’re working towards something AWESOME! “I’m training for a marathon,” you say, shrugging slightly in a false show of modesty, loving how cool it makes you feel to say that you are TRAINING for a MARATHON even though your longest run at the time had been six miles. (Almost a quarter of the way there, right?)

    Your ego is soaring. You are okay with the fact that you are sweaty and gross half the time. You are more often in workout clothes than normal clothes because you have no life. (That last part could just be me personally… whatever.) You convince yourself that that’s a better look for you so you don’t have to spend more time primping.

    You prioritize your runs as an important part of your day, not wanting to miss one, feeling convinced that with each and every run you’re getting faster, and stronger. And you are! In my third week of training last week, I set PRs at the 5K and the 10K just as a part of my normal training runs. You buy cute exercise clothes and new gear. You feel strong and empowered. You are TRAINING for a MARATHON and that is BAD-ASS and everyone knows it!

    You start completely normal and healthy traditions like celebrating the end of each long run in a hot tub with a beer. You may or may not spend the last few miles of said long run trying to pick which beer you want.

    You love the way it makes you feel. You love the excitement of trying something new. And you ARE feeling better. For me, the honeymoon phase culminated on Monday morning after I ran 9 miles and felt like I could have run 18. Not once was I sore, not once did I want to stop, not once was I not happy.

    And that’s not the reality of marathon training.

    That, my friends, is the honeymoon phase.

    Guess who’s NOT in the honeymoon phase anymore? Stay tuned to learn about phase two. Someday. Happy Super Bowl Weekend, everyone!!! GO STEELERS!!!

    Who are you rooting for in the game? And more importantly, what are you cooking??

  • SIMILAR POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE . . .

    Share
    • Filed Under: Pancakes (Food) Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    My Non-Meat Existence and the Vegetarian Kitchen Challenge

    February 1, 2011 by 39 Comments
    pp5

    It’s February!

    In past months, like the first real post I did back in May, I used to set a lot of monthly goals. Currently, there are a lot of things I’d like to “work on” that look like monthly goals (cut out refined carbs, eat fewer sweets, get better sleep, floss more, choreograph a few Zumba routines a week, finally make my blog better, etc.) but I have too much going on right now to focus on something like that in particular for February. This month doesn’t need a goal.

    So I thought.

    My new year’s resolution (which is, in fact, the mother of ALL goals) was to stop eating meat and base my diet on veggies and occasionally fish, which I outlined in my Pescatarian Project post way back when on NYE. I wanted to do this provisionally for a month but possibly for a year, and I think that time has come for me to review what I’ve been experiencing on this new diet.

    Details:

    • I haven’t eaten poultry or any red meat since Christmas, so almost six weeks.
    • I have eaten sushi twice and fish maybe three times in that period, so fish is not playing a big part in my diet.

    What I’ve liked:

    • I haven’t missed meat. At all. I know that six seeks isn’t a very long time, but I remember I too thought at one point, “I could never give up meat!” and it’s actually been really easy. There’s things I think of in kind of an offhand way (i.e., driving past Chili’s and thinking “man, those boneless buffalo strips are so good!”) but I haven’t been craving meat which I find surprising. But that’s good!
    • I’m a lot more open minded about veggies and conscious of them and have been learning more about different nutritional properties of different items in the produce section, which has been nice. I haven’t been paying for the groceries this month, but not buying meat saves you money. (But buying loads of fresh veggies is expensive too, but that’s a different story.)
    • Going out to eat is easier—there are a heck of a lot less choices, and I suffer from a severe condition I call “big-menu-induced-indecision.” It’s also a lot easier to choose a healthy, balanced meal by getting an appetizer and a salad, or a veggie soup/sammie combo, or what not. Sometimes veggie food is cheaper. Sometimes it isn’t. I also don’t have any desire to go to a lot of fasty-foody places I used to like because they just aren’t even an option anymore.
    • I feel like I’m being kind to animals. You can totally judge me on this one but it’s true.

    What I haven’t liked:

    Okay, maybe that’s the wrong title. I guess I mean to say, what hasn’t been that great about my experience so far.

    • I don’t feel any different/better. My diet’s been all over the place the last two years so I wanted to try some simple changes to see if I feel any better and I don’t. Every diet is different for everyone, and lots of people DON’T feel healthier on a vegetarian diet and that’s fine, but I thought I might feel a little better with the change and I don’t.
    • I don’t get enough protein. Yes, there are TONS of good-quality protein sources that aren’t meat! But it’s been hard to get enough into my diet, especially when I’m  running/marathon training four times a week, taking Zumba or body attack three times a week, strength training three times a week, taking yoga, and sometimes more! I am burning a lot of calories and I NEED the protein but I’m often not even getting half of what I should get. I have protein powder for shakes (which also isn’t ideal in my book because it’s not a whole food), I eat eggs sometimes, and I have some fake meat substitutes like those from gardein, but I’m a little weary of consuming too many soy products, for a variety of reasons. I eat peanut butter and beans a lot which brings me to my next point…
    • I eat too many carbs. Okay, I am SOOO far from a “carbs are bad!” type of girl—I would eat only bread and cereal and oatmeal and pasta and cookies and be quite satisified for a long time, if it was healthy! But, with my vegetarian diet, I’ve just been eating more carbs than normal, which is my own fault because of the next one…
    • For a quasi-vegetarian, I have NOT been eating enough vegetables. I can probably count the number of great salads I’ve made at home on one hand. (I had two face-size salads this weekend which might have made up for it, but that’s beside the point.)

    Sure, I’ve eaten vegetables—on sandwiches, in stir-frys, diced up in my eggs.

    Maybe a salad or two at home snuck in there.

    But I do NOT feel like I’m basing my diet on vegetables, which was, in fact, the main goal of my project. I want to FEEL like a vegetarian: I want to have a variety of different veggies in my diet EVERY DAY, round that out with lots of protein and whole grains. Not… a variety of carbs and a few insufficient sources of protein with a veggie thrown in here and there.

    So what’s a girl to do?

    I’m going to start eating some meat again… eventually. Not now. I want to FEEL like a well-balanced vegetarian (yes, I know I’m not a vegetarian right now because I occasionally eat fish—I just mean I want my mindset to be veggies only) before I start eating meat again because I want those habits to stick for life. Why am I intimidated by vegetarian cooking? Is chopping really THAT bad? (Answer: yes.)

    So here’s my goal for February.

    In order to embrace my self-imposed meatless existence and learn to honestly love veggies and base my diet on them I’m undertaking a little experiment which I am calling the Vegetarian Kitchen Challenge.

    The VKC, if you will.

    Instead of being a lazy-ass I am going to cook different, unique vegetarian dishes EVERY DAY in February. Okay, obviously it won’t happen every day but 5-7 NEW dishes per week. I know this is called “normal life” for a lot of people but it’s definitely not for me. I hope that by finally FORCING myself to learn how to braise kale that I will become a better plant-eater.

    I thought of going all Julie and Julia and vowing to cook my way through the entire Veganomicon by my birthday, but then I thought better of it.

    I’ve started out with two Veganomicon dishes: the pear and endive salad and the Israeli couscous with pistachios and apricots. Both came out lovely.

    But then again, what’s not to like when you get to candy your own pecans and deem it “vegan cooking?”

    I guess it’s not so scary after all.

    Bring on the VKC. (Cheesy alert! Actually, not cheesy. Unless it’s vegan cheese. Oh wait, I’m not vegan. Never mind.)

    Do you have any goals for February? What are your favorite and easy vegetarian dishes to cook? I need some inspiration!

  • SIMILAR POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE . . .

    Share
    • Filed Under: Pancakes (Food) Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

    (Definitely Not) The Next Iron Chef?

    January 19, 2011 by 11 Comments
    cu8

    Hey everybody!

    Final reminder (I promise)–this is the last day to enter the cookbook giveaway. I’ll pick a winner tonight before I go to bed (probably around 11PM PST) and will post it tomorrow! Yay!

    Moving on. I’ve gone into full-blown quarter-life-crisis mode in the last few weeks as I realize that 1. It’s time to get a job or go to school and 2. I honestly have no idea what I actually want to “do with my life.” We all go through it–most of us more than once! But I’ve been really trying to focus on my passions and what I really ENJOY doing and want to pursue. This led me to going to an open house yesterday morning for (you may have guessed it…) culinary school!

    I fueled up with some pumpkin oatmeal (one of many awesome pumpkin suggestions I’ve received). Looks weird huh? As you may be able to tell, it wasn’t very delicious, because I messed up the texture (too much pumpkin + too little milk  + too much protein pwoder + no banana = bad oats) but the fun part was my new favorite bowl. Ever been to one of those paint-your-own-pottery places? There’s one close by called Petroglyph that’s pretty fun.

    My family went last week before my little sis went back to grad school (at her insistence!) and I accepted my utter lack of artistic talent and went with something simple: an ice cream bowl with a sprinkle design inside. Too simple to mess up, even for me. (I wish I was artistic. Even my stick figures are hard to identify as people. If you like art, check out my friend from Mozambique, Camille’s blog–she illustrates it all herself with watercolor!! Can you imagine doing that?? What would a watercolor of my pumpkin oatmeal look like??)

    Anyway, I think the best part of those places is how no matter what, they look way cooler after they get glazed and fired. It’s a fun before and after.

    Ice cream bowl before (bottom left corner…)

    …And after!

    Anyways, lack of artistic talent aside, I’ve always had a dream of owning a cafe/bakery (preferably in an exotic foreign land) and so I headed down to the Art Institute of California–Sacramento’s open house to see if the programs in Culinary Arts (world cuisine! It’s an international school) or Baking & Pastry (umm… yummy?) were for me.

    The open house was really well-organized. We checked in, had snacks and fruit and then I joined a TON of other people to listen to the presentation for the culinary school. They explained the program, the fundamental skills and more specialized classes that students take, and what the days look like. Some classes (like pastry stuff) start at 5:30 am and others go til midnight! So, you spend a LOT of time in the kitchen. Unsurprising, I suppose! Speaking of the kitchen, we also got to go into one of the kitchens to listen to the head chef/academic director talk about the program as well as hear from visiting lecturer slash world champion fruit carver (!!!) Ray Duey who lives nearby. (The guy’s amazing. Google his name and see what pops up.) Or just look at this stuff:

    They talked a lot about what it means to be a chef and what kind of amazing opportunities it can provide when you go into the culinary arts. Being a personal chef, traveling the world, making tons of money supervising other people to do work… etc. Hard not to be motivated to become a chef after hearing that! We got some fruit-carving entertainment too…

    The program sounded really awesome and like the BEST thing you could do to prepare yourself for this kind of a career. The curriculum was WAY more in-depth and well-rounded than I expected: students take tons of classes on pretty much ALL aspects of the culinary arts, plus management, sanitation and other crucial components.

    The stuff that didn’t motivate me: hearing that we will be successful and rich… if we work 18-hour days, 7 days a week, for ten fifteen years, sacrifice EVERYTHING, so we can be rich and comfortable and work a normal schedule when we’re older. Am I the only one who would rather make a little less money to have balance in my life? To have time for me and my loved ones? That thinking means I’ll probably never be rich, but I’d rather be less well-off than be living for the future because tomorrow is never guaranteed. That’s just how I see it.

    In the end, I loved the idea of heading to culinary school, but it’s designed for people who 100% want to be professional chefs for the rest of their lives and it’s priced as such. It’s as expensive ($50,000+) as the Master’s programs that I’ve applied for this year! It’d be amazing, but at this point I can’t make a commitment like that. Maybe I’ll spend $100 on some new cookbooks and take a cooking class instead… and save the degree program for when I’m ready for my cafe. :)

    That reminds me!! I pretty much haven’t posted about Asia at ALL… including my Thai cooking class. Pretty awesome. It’s coming.

    Have a great day everybody!

    Have you ever taken a cooking class?

  • SIMILAR POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE . . .

    Share
    • Filed Under: Pancakes (Food) Tagged With: , , , , ,