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Thai Cookery
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We hoped to find hand-woven cottons and silks there, which we planned to bring to my friend's dressmaker in Bangkok and have our spring wardrobes custom-made. We'd fly up north, a 45 minute flight on Thai Airlines, shop, cook, eat, visit Buddhist temples and enjoy the art of Thai massage.
Through her Peace Corps connections (her husband is Peace Corps Country Director), Nancy located the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, considered by Peace Corps volunteers she spoke with to be the best. Run by Sompon Nabnian and his English wife, Elizabeth, the ten year-old school enjoys a good reputation. Sompon, the chief instructor, has a cooking show on British cable TV.
We had a choice of attending school at their restaurant in the Old City or their home in the suburbs. We chose the latter. We were picked up at our guest house and, following a tour of the local market to familiarize us with ingredients, we were driven to the Sampons' garden home where after preparing them, we enjoyed our creations on the spacious, sheltered deck.
Our fellow students were a worldly mix. The included an attorney from England, a chef from France who owned her own restaurant, several American ex-pats living in Hong Kong and various parts of China — teachers, bankers and corporate execs — masseurs from Hawaii and Scotland and Canadian retirees in Thailand to golf. While I had chosen two of the five day-long courses offered, many were taking the entire program, which included making curry pastes from scratch and the art of vegetable carving.
Instruction was in English. First, in the mirrored demonstra-tion kitchen we watched the instructor prepare each dish, say red curry with fish, fried noodles with sauce and steamed banana cake. Then, we each proceeded to our stations — there were 22 — where ingredients for the dish had been prepped. We then each made a single serving of the dish, while Sompon walked about offering suggestions and answering questions.
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Each minute of the day, from 9 am–4 pm, was packed with information, learning and doing. We ate so much we had no need of supper. Costs came to about $25 a day.
My biggest thrill came when after tasting my very own chicken in coconut milk soup, I was able to say it tasted just like the one I was used to at Siam Café in Albuquerque! From then on, I realized that I could master the Thai taste palate, until then so foreign, and familiarize myself with the ingredients enough to impress my dinner party guests for years to come. The experience was like studying a foreign language and hearing yourself speak a coherent sentence for the first time.
Once inside Thai cooking, I recognized its strong Indian and Chinese influences, with its use of curries, ginger and reliance on stir-fry cooking. One popular Thai dish, yellow curry with chicken is virtually indistinguishable from an Indian curry; while spring rolls, chicken with ginger and chicken with cashews as served in Thailand are very Chinese.
Thai food, with its generous use of chiles, is a natural culinary transition for New Mexicans. (Interestingly enough, the one time I got lost in Chiang Mai, the person I ran into who directed me to the celadon ceramic workshop I was looking for turned out to be a cook from Taos!)
Based on fish and vegetables, Thai cuisine is relatively low-fat, or at least, can be readily adapted to a low-fat diet by steaming instead of stir-frying and using less oil.
Most of the work is in selecting ingredients and preparation — quite a bit of slicing and dicing is required to get the timing right. Once cooking begins, dishes can be quickly assembled.
I was surprised to learn that even the Thais usually purchase their curry pastes — red, green, yellow and panang — in bulk at the market, rather than make their own.
I returned home with some knockout new outfits packed in my suitcase and a notebook full of recipes I couldn't wait to try out on my friends.
Here are three recipes for typical Thai dishes. All ingredients can be found at the Oriental grocery stores listed in Resources.
Resources
Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School 99B Supermarket Oriental groceries, fresh seafood, fresh produce, cooking utensils, herbs. Ta-Lin Supermarket Everything you need to cook and serve Thai food, from jasmine rice to lemongrass. Fresh herbs and vegetables delivered on Thursday. When buying pre-made chile pastes, be careful to read all ingredients. — Sharon Niederman |
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This article was first published
in the May 29th, 2002 issue of
The Santa Fe New Mexican