I didn’t anticipate going to a cooking class while in Bangkok. To me, cooking equals work and I work enough as it is. However, we had family in town and decided to give it a shot. It was super fun. I am disappointed we did not do it sooner. It is a great activity to do with guests.
We chose to go to Silom Cooking school. Silom offers a five course meal for 1000 baht (29USD) per person. This sounded good to us. At the outset, the instructor takes you through a local market to show you the ingredients and talk about spices. Then you arrive at the school and start the prep. You are taught how to make coconut milk and coconut cream from scratch (which is used in just about every Thai meal). We also made tamarind paste (making the paste was Chad’s task). You probably would just buy these ingredients pre-made at a grocery store if cooking at home but it was really interesting to see them produced the traditional way. Next, we got down to task at hand – cooking! We made Tom Yum Goong soup, Pad Thai, sticky rice with mango, Chicken Laab and Green Curry. You prepare the soup, curry and pad thai from beginning to end. You are mostly observing the preparation of the sticky rice and laab. The course is about 3 hours long. At the end of the day, you are provided a small paper cook book to take home with you. The recipe book contains instructions for the food you made that day and more. You aren’t going to become completely proficient at Thai cooking in three hours – but the class was a great introduction (and I do think I could make the soup again). I would highly recommend a cooking class at Silom. All of the dishes tasted fantastic and our guests said it was the best thing they did while in Bangkok.
Will Travel with Toddlers 