Today was the day we started Caellum’s cook for Mom & Dad training. We took a full day authentic Thai food cooking course where we got to make 6 different dishes. Theresa and Caellum, while cooking their own food, made the same things. I tried to make something different from the two of them.
We started with a quick tour of a local food market, while it wasn’t that big, it was a good spot to learn about some of the staples in Thai cooking. A few things like fresh galangal ginger, kaffir limes, thai corriander & thai eggplant are generally hard to come by in Grey Bruce.
The market was pretty tame as far as “strange” foods, but we’ll be seeing those things in Laos next week.
For curry paste, Theresa and Caellum chose the classic green curry, I went with the massaman curry.
Massaman curry (Thai: แกงมัสมั่น, rtgs: kaeng matsaman, pronounced [kɛ̄ːŋ mát.sā.màn]) is a rich, relatively mild Thai curry that is an interpretation of a Persian dish.
There were no food processors for making the curry paste, so we all had to use a mortar & pestle and plenty of arm strength. Once the paste was made, we all had to make some spring rolls. Caellum did a good job of rolling and frying the the popular appetizer. There were no cut digits or burns.
Now it was time to get going on a new dish, this time a soup. We had to do all the food preparation ourselves, and Caellum was happy to be using a big knife to cut up the various vegetables for the mise en place. I decided to make a spicy chicken & prawn soup and Caellum and Theresa did a prawn and coconut milk soup. Theresa’s prawns ended up in my soup.
My soup turned out really well, it was a broth based soup and was full of flavours from the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, thai basil and corriander. Caellum liked his prawn and coconut milk soup and it looked pretty good too.
Next up were our curry, as well as a fried dish. Caellum and Theresa did a fried chicken and cashew course, I went with the classic pad thai, which thankfully didn’t require a Heinz ketchup bottle.
There were tons of great smells as everyone cooked away at their dishes, some flaming woks make it even more exciting for Caellum. His green curry and chicken dish were great. The massaman curry was full of flavour, I don’t think I’ve had it previous to the class today. The pad thai I made was pretty good and I’d love to find all of the authentic ingredients back in Ontario.
It was time for the climax in Caellum’s world; dessert. I went with a sticky black rice pudding and Caellum and Theresa went with a fried banana and ice cream treat.
Sticky rice is easy to make, just soak it in water overnight and the next day, steam it for 20-30 minutes. Black sticky rice is generally only used for desert. For the dessert, throw it in a wok with some coconut milk and sugar and cook until it’s a pudding consistency. Then you finish it with a coconut cream, which is quite salty and the yellow things, which are been sprout seeds.
The fried bananas were done in a coconut sugar paste and coconut milk, you just do them until they’re caramelized. Again, Caellum did a really good job doing the prep and cooking the bananas. He only suffered a minor burn, but it’s always good to get the first one out of the way.
To finish off the day, we all received our completion certificate and a cookbook. Caellum promises he’s going to cook his chicken dish for us in Laos. We’ll update folks on that if it does indeed happen.
We’ll be doing some more cooking classes as we move about southeast Asia. Lao cuisine has a lot of Thai, Chinese and French influence in its food. Indonesian food is such a melting pot of so many flavours and styles, that it really is a cuisine all its own.
When we’re in Laos, Caellum really wants me to eat balut. He’s far more excited about it than I am, but I’m going to do it, and there will be video.
A balut (spelled standardized as balot) is a developing duck embryo (fertilized duck egg) that is boiled and eaten in the shell.
