To Travel is To Cook

To travel is to cook?
It snuck up on me without me realising. For years travel was a great excuse to sample much of the local food and drink wherever I went, kicking back in a local eatery and sampling their finest (and occasionally not so fine). And then at some point, I found myself signing up for cooking classes everywhere I went – I no longer want to just eat it, I want to cook it for myself and risk giving the locals a good laugh as I try to match their skills. So what exactly have I learned so far?

Crispy Golden Cups ready for eating!

Cooking class in Bangkok, Thailand

So here’s how I spend a 24 hr stopover in Bangkok on my way from Australia to Europe. I arrive at midnight, leave at midnight the following night, and in between head straight to the hotel to sleep, to be up bright and early in the morning for my cooking class pickup. The cooking school is about a half hour drive away in an attractive suburb, in a purpose built setting. It’s like a two-story open air pagoda, with a traditional roof to keep the direct sun off, and plenty of ceiling fans to keep us cool. There is a large central table where we gather around to watch the chef demonstrate, and then 10 individual stations so we can each try it ourselves. On the side are tables beautifully set with local wares and orchids, were we sit and dine on each course as soon as we finish cooking.
Today there just three students, so there is no where to hide. We are given a glossy little pack of recipe cards for the four dishes we will cook today, along with note pad and pen, which is really useful and makes a great souvenir to take away. Then it is straight into Kra-tong Thong, or Crispy Golden Cups, which require great concentration and a strong risk of burning ourselves. We coat the outside of the especially shaped brass tool with the thinnest batter and then delicately deep fry it til it pops off its mould. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. With those that make the cut, we fill our baskets with a tasty pork and sweetcorn mix we have stirfried on the side, and sit down to savor our creations.
Then its straight back into Yam Woon Sen, which means “mixed glass noodles”. Our mix is minced pork and mushrooms, with whole prawns on top. This really is a simple five-minute meal and deliciously light, and is going to get practiced at home for sure. We devour our plates and then jump into Nuea Pad Prik, a beef chilli stirfry. This is where the individual cooking stations, where we each make our own version, come into their own. I love chilli and my classmates don’t, so we each get to enjoy the dish with the level of heat that we like. And then we round it out with Gang Ka-ree Gai, a rich yellow chicken curry.
The chef and helpers present us with certificates and photos of our efforts, and, feeling stuffed to the gills with all the plates we have eaten, we roll into the air conditioned van to be dropped of back at the hotel. Time for a foot massage and a quick spot of shopping before I head back to the airport.
Verdict: a very professional, fun and well organised class, with lots of useful tidbits of information, and at least one dish that will become a staple (and one really complicated one that will never be made by me again).

Only the freshest of ingredients

Cooking class in Luang Prabang, Laos

Luang Prabang gets my vote for the most laid back spot on the planet. So it requires some effort on my part to get out of the chair and sign up for a cooking class run by Tamarind restaurant, a local favourite. Tamarind is owned and run by Joy, a local Lao man and his Australian wife, who we don’t meet as she has just given birth that week. Joy is also the chef, and today he is our cooking instructor as well. He takes us straight out to the edge of town to the huge daily produce market in an ugly but functional concrete space, very different to the ‘tourist’ markets in town. This is a hands-on tour, not only are we buying the ingredients to cook with, but we are sampling and smelling along the way. The Lao are definitely “top to tail” eaters, no part of any animal is left unused. I had no idea there were so many variations of buffalo skin, and I am definitely not trying the one with the hair still on. But the type of lettuce described as “like pickle, sour” is delicious, and the little hot “coconut milk biscuit” is some kind of warm wonderful soft cream macaroon. With our shopping done, we head to Joy’s family home on the edge of the Nam Khan, where they have constructed an outdoor traditional kitchen – we cook over braziers, not stoves, and use water out of large pottery containers, not taps. We do a lot of blackening of vegetables (aubergine/eggplants, garlic, capiscums/peppers over the open flame), and lots of pounding and grinding into pastes in big heavy mortar and pestles. And we end up creating chilli dips with sticky rice, chicken stuffed lemongrass (don’t even start me on how to stuff chicken mince into a thin piece of lemongrass – are they mad?), fish cooked in banana leaves, buffalo laap, and the Luang Prabang pork stew. And we spend the hours talking to Joy and his assistants and getting some great insights into family life in Lunag Prabang.
Verdict: well run, lots of hands-on information, exotic location and equipment, and I still put my well learned chilli grinding skills to use to make laap at home most weeks (but not with buffalo).

Stirfry cooking class in Shanghai, China

I love to stirfry – the wok has been a staple in my kitchen ever since I was a student. It’s quick one-dish cooking at its best. And yet my stirfries never taste like a restaurant’s stirfry, so I am excited to be doing this course. I find the Chinese Cooking Workshop in an edgy industrial alleyway block that has been converted into a maze of small creative businesses. Chef Huang walks us to a local wet market a couple of blocks away (Huang says this is so named because of the fresh meat and fish, but I think it was more to do with the constant washing of the blood and guts off the floor), and we get to find and buy our ingredients and gets lots of local food info along the way.

Learning from the best

Back in the classroom, we all share one large central bench to prepare, and we have a dedicated gas burner and wok each to cook. We tackle San Se Yu Si (literally, “colourful sliced fish”), Chao Shuang Gu (two mushrooms with oyster sauce), and Shanghai Chao Mian (no translation needed). I discover that pretty much every dish in Shanghai has a base seasoning of salt, sugar, pepper and Chinese cooking wine, and most are finished with a last minute addition of corn starch in cooking wine, to thicken any juices and create a glossy glaze so that each meal presents well. I learn how to make all the ingredients in the dish the same size and shape, and I have to agree, my dishes look and taste better than any I have cooked before. I learn little about the lives of the local Chinese but a lot about the lives of the poorer expats, the ones that don’t work in finance or business, but do want to learn the local cooking styles.
Verdict: Well organised course in a clean industrial setting, where I learn how to do the basics well, and how not to burn the ingredients at high heat.