Thai food: Miss Chel’s thai cooking class in Phuket
From the name of this blog, you can guess that food is important for me. That is why I try to learn as much as I can about the gastronomy of the places I visit. In Thailand, where they have one of my favourite cuisines, I had no choice but to learn how to prepare Thai food!
We were staying in Phuket, a beautiful island with many things to do but, unfortunately, very few that you can do without being surrounded by hoards of tourists, so I thought it was a great time to have a Thai cooking class. After browsing a bit, we decided to go for Thai Cooking Lessons by Miss Chel.
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First part: the market
One of the best things about this course was that Miss Chel, the teacher, took us to the local market. There she showed us how to recognize fresh ingredients for the dishes we were gonna make. That includes, at least in my case, recognizing vegetables that I had never seen before, which has been very helpful since when trying to find these ingredients in Barcelona. Some examples are galangal, lemongrass or kaffir lime (I knew they existed, I just had never seen them before…shame).
Second part: the ingredients
After this, we went back to the workshop. The kitchen is a delight in itself, built as an open covered space with view to the hills of Phuket. There, we started learning about the ingredients that we would use for our menus. You can choose among 4 sets of 4 dishes and 2 sets of 6. We chose one of the short sets due to our time limitation.
For me, the best part about this class was that Miss Chel knows how to transmit information. She didn’t just told us what to do for the recipe, but she explained why each ingredient was included in it. “This flavour compensates this other one”, “This ingredient adds an extra sparkle with this characteristic”. This is the essence of Thai food, and I can say that I understand it a bit better thanks to Miss Chel. Also, she is a show woman, so at least you will be entertained!
Third part: the recipes
As I said, we chose one of the 4-dish menus so we could learn these Thai recipes:
Review
For us this was one of the coolest experiences we had in Thailand. In Phuket, an overly touristic destination, it was great to have this genuine cultural and social experience. Having this relaxed afternoon, just us and a Singaporean couple having a self-cooked meal overlooking the beautiful hills of Phuket and joking with Miss Chel was one of my favourite moments during our time in Thailand. And all for the price of 1,600 baht (a bit under 50$). It is expensive compared to Thai standards for a meal, but the experience was well worth every penny. And I could bring it with me! Because now I know how to prepare these dishes.
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