It’s no secret that I LOVE food, but when it comes to cooking, I’ve never been able to do much more than steam a broccoli tree.
I remember one time a few years ago, Dad was in the middle of cooking sausages, and he realised we didn’t have any butter for the all important mashed potatoes.
While he ran down to Woolies I was left with the overwhelming responsibility of not burning the sausages. “Just keep an eye on them and turn them every few minutes,” he’d said. Easy.
About seven minutes later he ran through the front door screaming. From halfway up the street, he could see so much smoke coming from the kitchen window that he literally thought I had set our house on fire.
Busy watching The Simpsons, I didn’t even realise there was a problem.
I thought that moving out of home and all the way to Japan would have somehow forced my hidden master chef to show itself, but unfortunately our dirty little kitchen didn’t do much for inspiring culinary creativity. Some days it was so gross that I couldn’t even bare to go inside, for I feared the wild mutant bacteria might start jumping off the bench and latching itself onto my skin.
So if I wasn’t eating scraps of pizza off customer’s plates (not even slightly joking), I was surviving off my staple dish of rice and scrambled eggs with mayo. The meal that allowed me to be in and out of that kitchen as speedily as possible.
In Chiang Mai, my new friend Melissa and I were convinced by the guy running the hostel we were staying in that we definitely, positively had to do a cooking class while we were there. My history of cooking disasters were certainly against me, and when presented with five recipes of very complicated and delicious looking Thai dishes, I wondered how I was going to make it out of the day alive.
Well guess what my friends. I cooked some extremely DELICIOUS things. And the whole experience was really fun! I didn’t even burn anyone, slice off any of my fingers or contract salmonella poisoning. Success!
We started off with a choice of a few different noodle dishes, and I went for one of my all-time favourites, the classic Pad-Thai. It’s always a winner and this time was no exception. DAYUM it was good. I made mine really spicy, and added extra peanuts and lime. Super good.
We also made a curry from scratch. How cool is that?! We mashed together a collection of different ingredients in a mortar and pestle to make the curry paste and then cooked it up with some chicken and vege to make a really yummy curry. I made Kow Soi which is the signature curry of Chiang Mai. The stand out meal of the day, by a long shot.
I did make a few other things as well, all of which I can’t remember. We got some mango sticky rice at the end, and a recipe book to keep. If you’re considering a cooking school in Chiang Mai, I highly recommend Siam Rice Cookery School. The teachers are fantastic, the facilities are great and the atmosphere is warm (literally so freaking hot in there) and welcoming. The six delicious meals you get to eat are just a bonus.
Oh also, I should mention that during the cooking class there was an earthquake and everyone totally freaked out. It was funny though.
Maddi 'Round the World 