The Thai Cooking School Experience

Well, I've fought the good fight for far too many days now trying to get the rest of the pictures I took in Bangkok downloaded off my stupid Blackberry...to no avail. The ones that I did manage to get off were all related to my cooking class at Baipai, so here we go.

On Friday, 10 October, after nearly five days in Bangkok, most of which spent in conferences and meetings, I was able to take the day off and enjoy a cooking lesson at a Thai cooking school. My flight back to the States did not depart until 7PM and I really wanted to get a sense for Thai cooking, so a cooking class made perfect sense. I had found the school, Baipai, online after researching and reading recommendations.

Let me just say that I can't recommend the school highly enough. It was the highlight of my trip. The staff is incredibly friendly, the facilities great, and the food was delicious. And the value - outstanding. One of the greatest parts is that the cost of transfer to/from your hotel to the school is included in the rate. You can't beat that - not having to worry about a cab in chaotic Bangkok!

Baipai offers a morning and afternoon session and I took the morning session, with ten other guests. We were four Australians, two New Zealanders, two Brits, a Venezolano, and two Americans - a veritable UN. Our menu included chicken satay, prawn salad, cashew chicken, and mango sticky rice. Our hostess, Wan, was very friendly and got us organized quickly.

We started our morning in the markets - and not the Thai version of the Jewel, Albertsons, Safeway, Tesco, or any other grocery store that you may know. We went to one of the countless outdoor local markets that dot the landscape in Bangkok. Here's a look at the poultry section:

This was a little different than the wet markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai. These chickens were already prepped - not so much in the wet markets. There you pick your live one and let the butchering take place right before your eyes.

And I loved the air-dried beef section:

There were three trucks lined up like this, their beds chock-a-block with drying beef.

It was an incredible experience to walk through the market with Wan and to meet the local vendors and to be able to touch, smell, and taste so much of what was for sale. It was a party for the senses - the colors of the various fruits (explosive reds) and vegetables (deep, deep greens) on display were amazing, the tastes - lemongrass, coconut sugar were unforgettable, the smells - some indescribable, for a reason, others stunning. Don't let what may appear to be unsanitary, to Western standards, conditions get you. There is something so satisfying to walk through these markets and to get to know the culture at its most normal - going to the market for the daily stuff. It was amazing. We also went through one section that sold nothing but Thai fast food:

Who needs a value meal when you could walk away with a meal here for all of about .75 cents?

After the excursion through the market, it was back to class where Wan introduced us to our teacher, Nam. She was a lot of fun. We gathered around the main table as each course was demonstrated and then we would go to our individual cooking stations and prepare our own. Here's a shot of Nam and Wan in action:

Nam is on the left and Wan is on the right.

We cooked with woks and over open flame when we made our satays. I can't say enough about how well organized the class was. We were given recipe books and were able to take notes along the way. Our stations were prepared in advance of each course. There was plenty of time to ask questions and very importantly, time to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Here's a shot of our final course, the mango sticky rice:

This is what I prepared - the decorator flourishes, like the flower, were added by the school, but that's my rice. FYI - the sticky rice liked to have killed me. It was the most challenging of the four things to prepare!

I'm excited to give this all a shot here in Chicagoland. Fortunately, I can get all the ingredients here. Especially since there's a huge Asian market right around the corner! Anyway, I can't recommend this experience enough. If you are ever in Bangkok, beat a path to Baipai. It will be a highlight.

It was a good way for me to end my trip to Bangkok. I struggled with Bangkok. It's the first city in Asia that I don't feel like I need to see again. It's a big city, polluted and hot, but that's not bad. The Thai people are absolutely amazing. Gentle (and not in the weak sense of that word) and serene. What turned me off about Bangkok is the pervasive and perverse influence of Western culture - and not just American culture. Sadly so much of the Western culture that has made its way into Bangkok is Western culture at its worst. I won't get into it but some of what you see, completely inadvertently in Bangkok, makes Amsterdam look almost holy and pure. And that's what saddened me and made me not want to go back to Bangkok - you have a wonderful people and there are many of them that have been grabbed up by these vicious influences and those influences have destroyed them. It was tough to take.

That being said, I'd go back to Thailand in a minute - so much more to see. I've barely scratched the iceberg that is Asia. I look forward to seeing more and more.