‘Kin Kao’ Time!: Discovering Chiang Mai’s Delectable Dishes

This past time in Chiang Mai I had the opportunity of trying out an awesome new activity in Chiang Mai – Thai cooking courses at Baan Hong Nual Cooking School (surprisingly completed without burning the kitchen down…)...

Before I get started on the little details, it’s important to put out that you must fast before partaking in any cooking course, you will eat at least half your body weight in curry.  Early in the morning, my two awesome Scottish passengers and I were picked up from our guesthouse and taken to a local local market to go shopping for the ingredients for the dishes on our menu – pad thai (thai-style fried noodles), Som Tum (spicy green papaya salad), green curry, spring rolls, tom yum soup (spicy seafood soup), and bananas in coconut milk.  The market trip was definitely educational- it ends up not all those green, stalky things in the vegetable and herbs section are the same.  After collecting all the ingredients the cooking school did not grow itself, we were driven to the outskirts of town to an open-air kitchen surrounded by an extensive herb and vegetable garden.  Immediately, after a quick tour of the garden, we were set to work chopping, grating, and mortar and pestle-ing the ingredients for our first two dishes- tom yum and pad thai.  Luckily for our stomachs, the course was set up where you cook, then eat, then cook some more, then eat some more, allowing for maximum consumption.  Six hours later, we were dropped off back at our guesthouse, a million times more knowledgeable about Thai herbs and cookery and with a food baby the size of Texas.

The class learning about the difference between those green leafy things