Lindissi

Besides for eating bunches of yummy Thai food, Bec and I put our cooking skilz to the test. We enrolled our selves into the Koh Chang Thai Cooking School. Sa Wat Dee Kha Kin Khai Rauh Yang? The previous statement is the first thing they taught us and it means "Hello have you eaten yet?" Useful phrase for all those aspiring Jewish mothers out there. We are taught by Leng (which means dragon), she is the owner of the restaurant and cooking school. She does all the instructions but is helped with preparations and supervision our cooking talents by Nam (water) and Lab (sleep). So, basically Dragon lady, Water girl and Sleepy are our teachers. The first page of our cook book has drawings of animals including a cow, a chicken, a pig, a shrimp, a crab and a fish. We learn the Thai words for each of these which are Wua, Gai, Moo, Ghoong, Poo and Pla. Egg is Kai and New is Beef. I believe De is vegetarian. There are 10 of us in the group. Becky and I, 2 Germans, 2 Asian Australians, 2 Dutch, 1 French girl and Canadian guy that live in Hong Kong together. They are all very nice.

We beginning by making Pad Thai. My favorite! We all cut our ingredients and then one person cooks while the other assist and vice versa. First we make Pad Thai sauce together. The recipes makes enough sauce for two servings of Pad Thai.

1/2 cup coconut sugar - hard packed (substitute palm sugar or other sugar but use less)
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons tamarind sauce (sour kind of tamarind, sub rice or apple vinegar but only 2 tablespoons)
2 tables chili sauce (for color only)

Mix, on low heat stir until sugar resolves.
This will keep in refrigerator for 1 month.

Next we prepare the ingredients for 1 serving of Pad Thai:
2-3 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil any oil except olive
2-3 teaspoons chopped shallot
2 tablespoons tofu (hard)
1 teaspoon pound dried shrimps (soak in water for 1 minutes)
2teaspoons chopped pickled white radish (sub carrot)
fresh shrimps or chicken
1gg
rice noodle or vermicelli
3 to5 tablespoon Pad Thai sauce
1/4 Chinese chives (cut in 1 inch pieces)
1/2 cup bean sprout



Cook Over med/high heat (for beginners) high heat for pros. It should take about 7 minutes
1. Heat vegetable oil until hod, add chopped shallot fry until you can smell them
2. Add tofu, dried shrimp and pickled white radish
3. Add fresh shrimps or chicken cook until done and set a side.
4. Add 1 beaten egg, move all the ingredients on top and wait until the egg is firm and turn over (like omelet).
5. Add a handful of rice noodle
6. Add 304 tables of sauce and mix everything
7. Add some chili powder
8. Add bean sprouts an Chinese chives mix well
9 Serve with lime piece, crushed peanuts and fresh Chinese chives and bean sprouts.



Yummy! It was the best. We ate this before we started on the rest. Usually Pad Thai is just a side dish and not a main course.



After our snack. We each pair made a different kind of soups. We made Tom Kha Gai which means Galangal Chicken soup. Galangal is part of the ginger family. Another group Tom Kha Ghoong and the rest made Tom Tom Yam.. Tom Yam means spicy sour soup. There are two styles Nam Sai which is clear water and Nam Khon which is creamy water.

I won' g into the recipe if you want to try it let me know, but here is me cooking it up and the the base ingredients.



For the main dish we made curry. Most of the groups made a Red Curry Paste which is used as the base for most curries including:
panaeng - peanut,
massaman - more oily,
jungle - spicy
yellow - more curry powder

One group made green curry past which is used for green curry. The only difference is that green chilies are used instead of red.

Anyways there is a lot of ingredients and time to create curry paste. The good news its that it does keep for a month. It is probably easier to buy the store's curry paste and doctor it up with shallots and garlic. 

After you make (or buy) the curry paste all you need is:
100 grams of chicken breast,
1/2 cup aubergine, coconut heart, long bean, pumpkin
1/2 coconut cream
3 cups coconut milk
1 teaspoon coconut sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1/4 cup sweet basil leave
2-3 kaffir lime leave



Here I am hard at work:

How to cook:
1. Heat 1/2 cup cup of coconut cream and add 1.5 tablespoon red curry paste stir fry until fragrant and add torn kaffir lime leaves
2. Add chicken and cook until done and more coconut milk when curry looks dry
3. Add aubergine, mix well and add coconut milk slowly cook until soft
4. season with coconut sugar and fish sauce.
5 serve with sweet basil, sliced kaffir lime leaves and sliced spur chili, add coconut cream on top.
* for step 3 you add different ingredient's based on curry type. 
For mussaman add potato and onion and for go the basil.



Here we are enjoying the completed works fr the group.  We feasted on 5 types of soups and 5 types of curry.  Afterwards, we had mango and sticky rice