Cooking up the perfect storm

We took a break from eating marvelous Thai food with a class to (hopefully) learn how to make it. The class we chose -- of several on offer -- was through May Kaidee's vegetarian restaurant. May's original restaurant (which is very good) is in Bangkok; her sister Duyan runs one in Chiang Mai.

Dayun was a ball of energy. First thing in the morning, while we were still blinking and peering around for coffee, she fed us fruit and yogurt, supplied the needed caffeine, slung baskets over our arms, and headed out for ingredients.


To market, to market

At the market, she introduced us to all sorts of vegetables and made key distinctions between types of chilis, mushrooms, eggplants, etc. We did actually (thank you, caffeine) learn a lot from this.


Lesson 1: the smaller, the hotter


Buddhist vegetarians eschew garlic and onion because they supposedly make you greedy. Could be right.

After the intro, we picked up what we needed: jelly and oyster mushrooms, cauliflower, carrots, and tofu (she had the rest back at the restaurant), and went back to the restaurant.

(At the market, we remarked upon some curious-looking purplish slabs at the market, but didn't get them. They might look like chocolate pudding, but actually, they're bricks of chicken blood. Hm. No thanks.)


Chop chop!

Some quick cutting up of veggies, and then we trooped upstairs to the kitchen, where two burners and two woks awaited us.


Lesson 2: do not be afraid of oil

Lesser mortals might have been perturbed when the electricity went out a few minutes into the cooking, but Dayun was unfazed. We made two dishes by candlelight. The dark did not make up for the lack of a fan; it was hot. But we cooked on.


Carving some coconut


Check the noodles? Don't mind if I do

After an hour or so the lights and fan returned. We kept mixing, adding dashes and spoonfuls, stirring, tasting, serving, and starting on the next recipe.

We made, in all, about 10 dishes each in about 4 hours. We only realized the extent of it when we saw all the dishes laid out. The picture below shows probably half of it.

Alarmingly, we were then expected to eat what we'd made.


A mere fraction of our handiwork



It was good, no doubt about it. There was just an awful lot of it. We did our best -- and it had been a long time since that yogurt and fruit, so we were hungry -- but we slowed and finally stopped with a lot still on the table. Meanwhile, Dayun had already rounded up a new class and charged off.

We bagged the rest up for dinner and went back to our guesthouse to sleep.