Cooking with Thailand's famous vegetarian chef

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  Bangkok, Thailand
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The best thing I've done today was to go to my cooking class.  Chiang Mai has lots of Thai cooking schools, but I held out until Bangkok--in BKK there is May Kaidee, a vegetarian Thai lady who owns several vegetarian Thai restaurants.  The one a few blocks away from my guest house also hosts cooking courses that are strictly vegetarian, and lucky us!!  May had returned from Moscow yesterday so she herself was there to teach our course. 

She travels all over the world, teaching, and has owned these restaurants for 20 years, so I classify her as Thailand's most famous vegetarian chef. http://www.maykaidee.com/site/ 

My class consisted of me, Annette and Aoifa from Ireland, Paul from Laos, Lauren from USA, and Sarah from Belgium.  Sarah was my partner.  We began with a trip to the market, where we bought some local produce, locally made rice paper, learned about all sorts of types of food, and so forth.  We had to wear our red aprons and hats during the walk :)

Back at the restaurant, we began.  May's staff had cut up everything for us, so it was so convenient and easy.  We made Tom Yam soup (with a Tom Kah variation and another spicier variation), Isaan vegetables and tofu, and then Ginger and cashew fried vegetables.  Then we had a break, so May taught us the May Kaidee song.  It goes:

Sap sap sap sap sap
Sap sap sap sap sap
Mun pet mun sab sap kaothung shaong
Tom thai tom lao hat hung
Pat thai tom pai hat hung
Tom yam tom kang aroy
Sud may kaidee nun sep elee elee

It's basically a song about delicious food.

Then we made pad thai and peanut sauce.  After we made each dish we ate small portions of it from little bowls.  We got full very fast.  We also made massaman curry and ate that with some brown rice...

Local lady making rice paper with hands

and then green thai curry.  I was finally able to realize that the spice that I really, really dislike (and have had several times over the past 8 weeks) is Thai basil.  No more, no more, I just can't stand it.  And now I know what it is!

Then we moved to the inside, sat, and made our spring rolls (rolled them up like little burritos!  I haven't had a burrito in forever!).  We dipped those in our previously made peanut sauce.  After, we made pumpkin hummus with mortar and pestle and green papaya salad.  Paul owns a restaurant in Laos so he made beautiful garnishes, seen in the photos.

Last... we ended with our mango, banana and sticky rice with coconut milk dessert.  This is probably my favorite Thai dessert and May makes it uniquely with black rice.  Soooooooo good.

Funnily enough, we ended the day with May teaching us how to dance, in the traditional Thai style.  So much more than I paid for!  It was lovely.  :)

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May explaining basil	Local produce (galangal root, lemongrass...	Ready ingredients	Paul getting ready
Me in my cooking garb	Cashew vegetables	May singing the song	Pad Thai
Eating the Pad Thai I made!	Black sticky rice w/ coconut milk	Green curry	Our class + May
My spring roll	Pumpkin hummus	May's helper singing	Green papaya salad with garnish
Dessert!	And then she taught us to dance

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