After a little getaway from the city, we had to return for the third & final dentist appointment. I took this opportunity to sign us up for my one big activity I *had* to do while in Thailand: a cooking class!

Turns out, these are quite a common activity, but I think I found the gem. Silom Thai Cooking School was affordable, fun, and delicious! Our morning class had 10 participants – 4 South Koreans, 3 Americans, 2 French, and 1 Thai.

The morning started with a trip to a nearby market to learn about & purchase the products we’d be cooking that day. We went through all the important Thai veggies and the differences among the varieties of gingers, eggplants, chilis, and basils.

Our class was held in their new classroom facility, which was clean, spacious, and beautiful. Our first lessons were in identifying key ingredients in Thai food, namely sugar & fish sauce, which are found in *everything*! Our instructor said if it doesn’t taste Thai, just add more sugar – haha!

We learned the difference between jasmine rice & sticky rice and differences in preparation for the two. Our first tasks included making coconut milk & cream, and tamarind paste, both fairly labor instense activities. We also handmade the curry paste for our curry dishes, which was also very labor intensive, involving good rhythm with thebmortar & pestle. Our instructor said this is how you show you’re good wife material and how to impress your mother-in-law, based on how well you can make the curry paste!

The method of the class was prep your veggies, go up to cook the food (nothing took more than 10 minutes in the hot wok), then come eat. Repeat for all 5 courses.

Our menu:

-hot & sour prawn soup (tom yum goong) 

-fried noodles Thai style (pad thai sai kai)

-green curry with chicken (kaeng ka ri gai)

-red curry with chicken (kaeng ped gai)

-mango sticky rice (khao neaw ma muang)

Luckily, we received a cook book to take home with all the ingredients and recipes to try to recreate back at home! Absolutely delicious food, magnicifent & funny instructor, wonderful company, and a great activity wih each other!