Chiang Mai - Cookery course

We flew to Chiang Mai in an effort to save time but when we got here Chiang Mai was 'full'. We wandered the streets getting irritable and eventually found ourselves a lovely guesthouse run by the equally lovely 'Jimmy' who helped us plan our stay in the city and before long we walked away having booked ourselves onto a cookery course and a three day trek.
The cookery course was fun, we were driven out of the city to a small organic farm to learn how to cook a handfull of Thai dishes. We went via the market where the fascinating world of rice was explained to us and ingredients were bought. The market was fun, there were pigs-heads, live fish and some great veg kicking around. The cooking itself was a real laugh but kind of dissapointing as all the prep, (as chefs say), was done for us. We all had our own station with utensils, oils and a burner and we were walked through green curry paste which we used to make a green curry funnily enough, stir-fried chicken in oyster sauce, Tom-Yam soup with prawns, Bananas in coconut milk and spring rolls.
The paste tuition was kind of redundant as we knew how to make it already as was the curry and the stir-fry. The Tom-Yam soup was new to us but not really something we'd make at home, (give us tomato or French onion anyday), the banana in coconut milk went an interesting shade of grey and frankly spring-rolls are a damn sight easier to buy. That all said though we did have a great time and the trip around the farm to teach us about the ingredients with the brilliantly named 'Bun' was really informative.

Here's Beth with a chilli. It's a green one.