One of the things that Lady Hiva and I have loved to do on our travels is taking a cooking class. We did one years ago in Bangkok and wanted to do it again. The Muggles seem to enjoy it too. We chose a class that took us to the market to do shopping. It was fun to walk around the market and learn about all of the fruit and vegetables used in Thai cooking.
We were able to try all kinds of fruit. Dragon fruit of multiple colors, mangostein, snake fruit, and passion fruit. Some of them we were familiar with from our travels in Asia and from Hawaii. But others were new.
One thing about Thailand is that there are plenty of coconuts to eat.
We watched them make new coconut milk. It was fun to see how it happens. Lady Hiva is convinced that Thai coconut milk is the best milk there is. We will hunt store after store to find some from Thailand. But to see it made in person was an experience.
After we learned about all the ingredients, we went back to VJ's kitchen and we cooked 4 different dishes. It was so much fun. We all cut our own fresh ingredients and then cooked them. We made a traditional soup, pad thai, green curry and masaman curry, and mango sticky rice.
We loved hearing the stories behind each dish. I especially liked hearing that Pad Thai only has its origins until 1913. There were natural disasters and droughts so there were not rice crops, so the Thai people started to eat Chinese noodles. The ruler at the time wanted to have a dish that was Thai, not Chinese, so they came up with Pad Thai that was made a street food so it was accessible to all people. They laugh that 5 star hotels now serve it!
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