My Thai diary Wokking it up in Madame Wandee’s kitchen
October 2, 2003 | 12:00am
What? Me cook Thai food? And have for dinner what I cooked? It seemed like a dicey proposition.
Although I find Thai food to be fortifying and even refreshing, I shun the chilies that often make many of its dishes a fiery experience. But when I’m in the mood for a culinary shock, I brave a Thai restaurant solo. None of my friends would come with me, since they prefer the comforts of Chinese food or a fried chicken meal.
But there I was at the Wandee Culinary School on Silom Rd. in Bangkok, Thailand, along with four newshens from other Manila publications – Lai Suarez of Manila Bulletin, Anne Jambora of Philippine Daily Inquirer, Melanie Cuevas of Metro Magazine and Cathy Guballa of Me Magazine – dressed in green aprons, armed with ladles and soup spoons. We were on an educational tour of Bangkok, courtesy of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, visiting its spas and attending the Thailand Health and Beauty Show 2003.
Yes, we were going to cook Thai food, and yes, we were going to learn from an expert Thai chef. Our teacher, Prof. Wandee Na Songla, teaches at the Royal Culinary School and is one of His Majesty The King’s personal chefs. Cooking credentials can’t go any better than that in Thailand.
As we waited for the other visiting journalists from Singapore and Indonesia to arrive at the school, we were handed out the day’s menu: Taro pudding topped with coconut cream (ta ko paeuk), green curry with chicken (khaiw wan kai), Thai fried noodles (pad thai) and spicy prawn soup (tom yam goong).
Oh, yummy, I told myself. I know all these dishes. First-timers to any Thai restaurant won’t go wrong if they order these.
We worked on the taro pudding topped with coconut cream (ta ko paeuk)first, since it would take time for the dessert to cool and set. Cathy started working on the base ingredients, but she seemed uninspired in her stirring of the water chestnut mixture. She confessed later that she was never that great in the kitchen, preferring to turn over her cooking duties to her cook.
I volunteered to stir the mixture; it was easy as pie. The trick to Thai cooking is to have a steady hand. When a recipe calls for coconut cream or milk, as in many ginataan dish in the Philippines, you have to stir continuously lest it burns. We had one of Madame Wandee’s assistants to guide us in our cooking.
When the base mixture has thickened to a sticky consistency, you should immediately fill the pandan leaf mini cups with it, or whatever mold or container you have at home, because the mixture congeals once it cools. The same is true for the topping mixture, which is made with coconut cream.
If you’re looking for something to do on a weekend with the kids, you can work on this recipe with them and ask them to help you fill up those little cups.
The next dish, green curry with chicken, had all of us holding back on the chilies. As I got busy stirring the coconut cream, the girls got busy with the curry paste. They held back on the chilies, something our teacher found amusing.
I continued stirring. When the curry paste was finally added to the coconut cream, the assistant told me to slow down on the stirring. The mix should boil so that the coconut oil would rise to the top.
It didn’t really matter whether we cut down on the chilies or not because we would have to adjust the spiciness of the mixture later. Just before the dish is taken off the fire, one would have to taste it and adjust the seasoning. If it’s too hot, palm sugar would cut down on the spiciness.
While we often eat chicken curry with steamed rice, we were later told that it is traditionally taken with parboiled rice noodles. I tried it and the noodles actually bring out the nutty flavor of the curry. But nothing really beats rice.
Who doesn’t know phad thai? This Thai pancit is prob-ably one of the most well-known Thai dishes. And surpri-singly, it is not complicated to prepare.
All it takes is advanced preparation. The ingredients should be prepared in ad-vance, so that you do nothing but just add them one by one as you sauté the noo-dles.
And the final touch of a scrambled egg requires patience, timing and practice. The egg should come out whole when you flip the noodles with it. If the egg breaks into pieces or falls apart, be sure to mix it into the noodles well.
The tom yam goong is just as easy, and I let the girls work on it by them-selves. We were done in a jiffy, and in a few moments we re-turned to Madame Wandee’s office where impromptu dining tables had been set up.
We were happy with our cooking, because it tasted just as good as we imagined it to taste like. At the end of the evening, after we had demolished the platter of ta ko, it was only then that we remem-bered we should have asked one of the Thai cooking assist-ants to try our cooking. But all our bowls were empty. Well, it must have been really good.
Wandee Culinary School is at the fifth floor of Dokyo Book Store, 134/5-6 Silom Rd., Bangruk, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. For inquiries on courses, call (66)2237–2051, (66)2237-2054 or (66)2634-4121.
Although I find Thai food to be fortifying and even refreshing, I shun the chilies that often make many of its dishes a fiery experience. But when I’m in the mood for a culinary shock, I brave a Thai restaurant solo. None of my friends would come with me, since they prefer the comforts of Chinese food or a fried chicken meal.
But there I was at the Wandee Culinary School on Silom Rd. in Bangkok, Thailand, along with four newshens from other Manila publications – Lai Suarez of Manila Bulletin, Anne Jambora of Philippine Daily Inquirer, Melanie Cuevas of Metro Magazine and Cathy Guballa of Me Magazine – dressed in green aprons, armed with ladles and soup spoons. We were on an educational tour of Bangkok, courtesy of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, visiting its spas and attending the Thailand Health and Beauty Show 2003.
Yes, we were going to cook Thai food, and yes, we were going to learn from an expert Thai chef. Our teacher, Prof. Wandee Na Songla, teaches at the Royal Culinary School and is one of His Majesty The King’s personal chefs. Cooking credentials can’t go any better than that in Thailand.
As we waited for the other visiting journalists from Singapore and Indonesia to arrive at the school, we were handed out the day’s menu: Taro pudding topped with coconut cream (ta ko paeuk), green curry with chicken (khaiw wan kai), Thai fried noodles (pad thai) and spicy prawn soup (tom yam goong).
Oh, yummy, I told myself. I know all these dishes. First-timers to any Thai restaurant won’t go wrong if they order these.
We worked on the taro pudding topped with coconut cream (ta ko paeuk)first, since it would take time for the dessert to cool and set. Cathy started working on the base ingredients, but she seemed uninspired in her stirring of the water chestnut mixture. She confessed later that she was never that great in the kitchen, preferring to turn over her cooking duties to her cook.
I volunteered to stir the mixture; it was easy as pie. The trick to Thai cooking is to have a steady hand. When a recipe calls for coconut cream or milk, as in many ginataan dish in the Philippines, you have to stir continuously lest it burns. We had one of Madame Wandee’s assistants to guide us in our cooking.
When the base mixture has thickened to a sticky consistency, you should immediately fill the pandan leaf mini cups with it, or whatever mold or container you have at home, because the mixture congeals once it cools. The same is true for the topping mixture, which is made with coconut cream.
If you’re looking for something to do on a weekend with the kids, you can work on this recipe with them and ask them to help you fill up those little cups.
The next dish, green curry with chicken, had all of us holding back on the chilies. As I got busy stirring the coconut cream, the girls got busy with the curry paste. They held back on the chilies, something our teacher found amusing.
I continued stirring. When the curry paste was finally added to the coconut cream, the assistant told me to slow down on the stirring. The mix should boil so that the coconut oil would rise to the top.
It didn’t really matter whether we cut down on the chilies or not because we would have to adjust the spiciness of the mixture later. Just before the dish is taken off the fire, one would have to taste it and adjust the seasoning. If it’s too hot, palm sugar would cut down on the spiciness.
While we often eat chicken curry with steamed rice, we were later told that it is traditionally taken with parboiled rice noodles. I tried it and the noodles actually bring out the nutty flavor of the curry. But nothing really beats rice.
Who doesn’t know phad thai? This Thai pancit is prob-ably one of the most well-known Thai dishes. And surpri-singly, it is not complicated to prepare.
All it takes is advanced preparation. The ingredients should be prepared in ad-vance, so that you do nothing but just add them one by one as you sauté the noo-dles.
And the final touch of a scrambled egg requires patience, timing and practice. The egg should come out whole when you flip the noodles with it. If the egg breaks into pieces or falls apart, be sure to mix it into the noodles well.
The tom yam goong is just as easy, and I let the girls work on it by them-selves. We were done in a jiffy, and in a few moments we re-turned to Madame Wandee’s office where impromptu dining tables had been set up.
We were happy with our cooking, because it tasted just as good as we imagined it to taste like. At the end of the evening, after we had demolished the platter of ta ko, it was only then that we remem-bered we should have asked one of the Thai cooking assist-ants to try our cooking. But all our bowls were empty. Well, it must have been really good.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>
