Thai Cooking!

I finally had the opportunity to take a few Thai cooking classes!  I love Thai food, especially the curries and now I'm learning to make them!  This morning's adventure began with hiring a motorbike taxi driver.  Since I didn't have the slightest idea where "Happy Home Thai Cooking School" was located, the driver this morning was very patient and willing to put up with a lost foreigner.  After driving around for half an hour I asked him to stop at an Internet cafe so that I could look up the owner's phone number.  The taxi driver was nice enough to wait outside while I searched for the phone number.  Finally, after about half an hour of searching we arrived outside "Happy Home".

Our group for the day consisted of 5 Canadians, a young Thai girl, and myself.  The owner, Sheri, is a very nice woman with a great sense of humor.  We first learned to cook Thai yellow curry. To make the curry paste we chopped the garlic, onion, shallots, etc. and placed them in mortar (bowl) and used a pestle to grind the ingredients into a paste.  Making the curry paste requires a bit of patience and muscle, but the effort is well worth it.  I have to admit that my yellow was awesome, especially for a beginner! Following the curry was Tom Yum soup which is a spicy, sweet chili pepper based soup with shrimp or chicken.   It is surprisingly easy to make and really tasty as well.  After Tom Yum soup we made Pad Thai Noodles with shrimp.  Yummy!!!  Pad Thai Noodles are rice noodles with egg, tofu, peanuts, and your choice of meat all mixed up.  It is so good, definitely one of my favorite Thai dishes.  We ended our four-course cooking class with a nice pork and dried shrimp salad with glass noodles.  Did I mention that we ate whatever we made? By the end of the day we felt as if we could roll home!