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| Fish Cakes (Tod Man Pla) |
Oh I have been looking
forward to posting about this; my day the Cook’s Academy on South William St
for a Thai workshop. It was a Christmas present from my brother who I must
thank again, best present ever! (that is in no way a hint to family members for
future Christmas or birthday presents…).
The course started at 10am on Saturday morning and we were welcomed with
coffees and cookies. The first thing I noticed
was the incredible amount of men in comparison to women, but it soon became
clear when we were addressed and split into our two groups; the Thai workshop
and a Men only class, ah ha the penny drops (great idea by the way, I already have
the boyfriend in mind for that class!).
Our class were sent down
to one half of the massive kitchen where there were four stations each accommodating
6 students. We were provided with an
apron and introduced to our instructor Hilary who described herself as being
passionate about Thai food because it’s delicious, easy and also healthy. There were also 2 more chefs there to help us
called Arnie and Kari. We got right down
to business by watching a demonstration of how to make homemade Thai Green
curry paste which was followed by returning to our groups and attempting a
version ourselves. Each group got a
different paste to make, then a curry to make out of the paste and also a Thai
starter. This was a good way of mixing
everything up as we were encouraged to visit the other groups and see what they
were cooking also. Our group got a Thai
red curry paste with which we made a vegetable curry and our starter was
chicken satay skewers. We made the paste
as a group and then did everything else in pairs. I learned from talking with
my group that the majority of us at the course had received the workshop as a
Christmas present, there were also a number of couples there and groups of
friends, which is nice to do together but I quite liked going there alone and
meeting new people.
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| Ingredients for the curry paste |
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| Thai Red Vegetable Curry |
Hilary explained the basics
of Thai cooking to us and assured us that once you have that down it is quite easy
to master any dish. To perfect Thai you
need to achieve a perfect balance of flavours namely; salty, sweet, spice and
sour; there is also a 5th flavour the elusive ‘umami’. The umami taste is a little difficult to
describe, Hilary defined it as a distinctive savoury/salty flavour that is
found in the likes of fish sauce, shrimp paste and Worcestershire sauce. Wikipedia describes it as “Umami has a mild but lasting aftertaste
difficult to describe. It induces salivation and a furriness sensation on the
tongue, stimulating the throat, the roof and the back of the mouth”, which basically sums it up but then again doesn’t! So that’s what we were trying to master with
our Thai cooking, the perfect balance, and the umami, simples! Learning to make
the paste was fantastic and I will never return to jars, the difference is vast
and that is down to the fact that you fry your spices (coriander and cumin
seeds) and grind them yourself and also because we learned to use more exotic
ingredients like shrimp paste and tamarind which can be bought easily in any
Asian market. You can also make the
paste in large quantities and it will keep in the fridge but do not freeze it
and also don’t add fresh herbs like coriander because this will cause the paste
to go brown. Add the herbs at the last
stage of cooking when you are adjusting your flavours.
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| Thai Chicken Salad |
Our morning session ended with a huge
buffet lunch where we got to sample everyone’s dishes and was I ready for it;
all the cooking had me salivating and I’m not ashamed to say that I went for 3
rounds (no judgement! I had to sample everything, it would have been rude not
to). All the food was fab, now I might
sound a bit biased here but I definitely think that our group’s satay skewers
and Thai red vegetable curry were the best! Close second were the fishcakes and
the chicken salad which I will be attempting soon. In the afternoon we had a
quick demonstration of how to make a fast and delectable Pad Thai which we then
got to attempt, at this stage I was rightly stuffed so I packed that into my Tupperware
for later. Finally we were shown a
simple exotic fruit salad and that was it! The time flew and I can’t stress
enough how much I enjoyed the day; the team were amazing, very helpful and
answered any question we had. They were enthusiastic and also easy to follow so
big kudos to the cooks academy (I am already planning to return for the Sushi
workshop, *cough, hint!!).
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| Chicken Satay Skewers |
One final
note, after my success at the workshop, I somersaulted in spectacular style off
the sobriety wagon, 21 days, ENOUGH!! I felt I deserved it and yes I enjoyed my
first glass of wine, and my second..and my gin and tonic…you get the drift! Yes
I’m weak but I’m also Irish, I can’t help it (that’s my excuse..). Oh and Sunday I cooked a family dinner of chicken satay skewers and Thai red vegetable
curry, that’s where I was going with the ‘Family Thais’ title, get it…THAI’s…*tumbleweed.
