Cooking with Creets

 

I am not a cook.  I don’t cook for others, and I rarely cook for myself.  When I do cook, I think I do an adequate job.  There might even be a small seed of greatness lurking inside.  A small seed, mind you.  I can hear my friends laughing already.  Ask any one of them and they will list off for you the items that existed in my bare refrigerator or in my rarely stocked cupboards back in my apartment in the States.  I am instead what some might consider a sandwich connoisseur.  I would stake out all the great sandwich places in the city and 80% of my diet was on these delectable deli foods.  So now I hear you all wondering: why on earth would you want to go to a Thai cooking school?  Because I think it would be awesome!  I really like the idea of going to a fresh market, picking out some ingredients, heading back to a house, throwing these things together, and wallah! like the Swedish Chef in the Muppets I have concocted greatness out of many parts!  And you better believe I would be hooting and singing like the Swedish Chef the entire time, too.

So it should now come as no surprise to anyone that when Laura, my backpacker friend who I met in Bangkok, was my diving buddy in Ko Tao, and is now volunteering in Chiang Mai, asked if I wanted to do a Thai cooking school I promptly answered YES!  Maybe a little too enthusiastically, but I was ready to let that inner chef grow.  Let him grow and see the disaster that results!  It will be fine dining and entertainment for all!  Fun, mischievous, singing like a Swedish Chef, and deadly utensils are involved too.  Let’s make this happen!

We (and by we I mean Laura planned everything) decided on the Siam Rice Thai Cookery School.  One of Laura’s friends from her volunteer place had gone previously and recommended it due to the fact that you pick your own menu, the class size is small, it is in a house environment instead of a school, and it is very low key.  I’m game, I said.  Let’s cook this stuff up.

I was game, too.  I was pretty excited to do a little Thai cooking and maybe have a few recipes I could impress my friends with back home.  “Creets cooks like a champ!  Creets, you are an amazing chef!”,  I could already hear them say.  Greatness was just within reach.

We decided on an evening course, and our driver and cooking instructor picked us up outside Laura’s volunteer house.  It would only be the two of us in the class tonight (score for a private session!) and off we went to the market.  Here we were shown the different Thai ingredients we would be using.  Before telling us, our Commander in Chef would ask us if we knew the ingredient.  We would touch it, feel it, smell it, and hazard a guess.  I was impressed with myself that I knew a good deal of the ingredients.  Yeah, take that my doubting friends!  Of course, I had worked as a produce manager for a local grocery store (shout out to Hy-Vee!) for a few years in high school, and my parents had a garden in our backyard while I grew up so I should have known pretty much all the ingredients, but hey, whose keeping track anyway?

After our introduction to the ingredients, our cooking master set us loose to check out the rest of the market, where we finally were able to ask questions about all those strange looking substances.  Of course our funny chef-man would make a joke first before telling us the real answer.  Those?  Monkey skin.  Monkey brains.  Snake meat.  Whatever, we would reply.  Some of the things, however, were strangely and grossly real.  Pork skin, chicken intestine (I knew that one from my street stand incident in Bangkok!), and chicken gizzards.  Mmmm…yummy.

Once finished with the market we headed to the house that was Siam Rice Thai Cookery School.  It was quaint and immediately we knew we had made the right choice.  Since we decided on a night class we were each allowed to create our own menu of foods we wanted to prepare from a list of four dishes.  We had a choice between different kinds of soup, noodles, stir fried vegetables, and curry.  For round one, we started with soup and noodles.  I chose chicken coconut soup while Laura chose the hot and sour soup, and for noodles I chose Pad Thai while Laura chose fried big noodles.  We wanted to each choose something different so we could maximize our list of dishes.

 

Once the dishes were chosen, off we went outside to our little kitchen cooking area.  Here the ingredients were laid out, and a butcher knife that clearly was not a prop was waiting to be used.  Yes, I am a real chef now!  Digits be damned!  I might lose a finger or toe, but I will make one hell of a chicken coconut soup!  In reality, it was a lot of fun.  Our chef maestro showed us how to cut each of the ingredients, we followed his lead (although I am not quite as deftly skilled in the fine art of chopping up little things) and we set to work creating our concoctions.

I looked down once things were really cooking (ha! Funny cooking pun intended!) and nodded to myself in satisfaction.  This stuff actually looks pretty good, I thought.  I think it is gonna taste awesome.  I think I am awesome!  Look out Chef Boyardee!  Make way for Chef Creets!

In all seriousness, it was good.  Laura and I moved our finished products to the table inside and set about digging in to our wonderful creations.  It was fun, it tasted good, and boy was it a lot of food!  We still had two more dishes to go!  We were having a great time.  We quickly realized, however, that the bland water sitting at the table was not going to do.  Chang Beer, we called!  We need to get a little alcohol flowing for these two awesome chefs.  So off our Chieftain Chef went down the street to procure us a couple big bottles of Chang for round number two.

 

Round two consisted of a stir fried vegetables dish and a curry dish.  Laura and I both chose chicken with cashew nut (I know, we broke the cardinal rule of never selecting the same dish, but seeing as how this was one of my favorite dishes I wasn’t about to choose anything else), and for the curry I chose green curry and Laura chose Massaman curry.  Little did I know when I smelled the green curry in the market that it was a very spicy dish.  Now our Dean of Chefs, newly appointed Director of Disastrous News, told me it was one of the spiciest.  I should let you know at this time that while I don’t cower in fear of spicy foods, in general I haven’t learned to adapt to them yet.  I am getting better.  I’m not a novice, but I’m no seasoned veteran of the spices yet.  Green curry was a foe I hadn’t mastered on the battlefield yet.  My challenge awaited.

Chicken with cashew nut involves one very fun exercise: playing with fire!  Neither of us knew that in order to cook it you pretty much flash-fire the pan and cook everything for about 30 seconds.  Now I know that isn’t the correct “cooking term” but c’mon, this is coming from a guy who usually puts some ham, Swiss cheese, and lettuce inside some hoagie bread and calls it a meal.  Anything more advanced than spaghetti and we are getting outside my comfort realm.

Well, I must say that after my trial by fire, I can now confidently say that I am the master of fire!  I own you, fire!

On to the curry.  We beat the ingredients to a mushy pulp, and wallah, green curry is ready.  Mix, match, cook, do this, do that, follow my Captain Chef’s instructions, and round two is done and ready to consume!

Wow, what a meal.  While the chicken with cashew nut was a little bland for my tastes, I was still excited that I had personally made it.  The green curry was…spicy!  Holy smokes was it spicy!  We even put less spicy pepper in than normal (about 10 peppers) and it was still kicking my ass!  However, I had some help from my friend, Mr. Chang Beer, to extinguish some of the flame inside my mouth.

All in all, what a great night.  I had, yet again, a fantastic time with my friend Laura as we discovered new ingredients, cooked new dishes, and enjoyed tasting each other’s concoctions.  We did well.  Very well.  I would say we passed with flying colors.

Now you would think the night would be over, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one more event.  Our chef leader and his friend needed to drive us back to Laura’s volunteer house, and on the way he asked us if it would be ok if we stopped real quick at a 7-Eleven.  Sure, we said, thinking he needed to run an errand.  Nope, he was going inside to buy some Chang beer.  He jumped out of the truck and a minute later reappeared with three Chang beers and one Coke for the driver.  You see, in Thailand it is only against the law for the driver to drink and drive.  The passengers can drink away.  Laura and I sat in the back of the truck, giggling like high school teenagers.  The driver turned up the music, all American Top 40 tunes, and we made our way back to the house, throwing down cans of Beer Chang and listening to Black Eyed Peas thumping on the speakers.  It was a glorious night.