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THAILAND
I
didn’t have much experi-
ence with Asian cooking
before my recent trip to
Thailand; at the Culinary In-
stitute of America we focused
more on French, Italian, and
American regional cuisines. We
had a short class that covered all
of Asia in which I learned thatThai cooking
uses lemongrass and limes, not lemons, but
that was about it. But I love to eatThai food,
so the main thing I wanted to do on my trip
was take a cooking class. My boyfriend,
Alton, joined me.
Our first stop was Chiang Mai city where
I signed up for a class at the Thai Farm
Cooking School. The class started with a
trip to a Wet Market, which is a term for
a market that sells meats and produce. The
produce was so fresh! I got to try several
exotic fruits and vegetables that are too
fragile to ship to the US. The fruit was so
sweet and ripe it was like eating candy.
From there we headed to the cooking
school, about 30 minutes outside of Chiang
Mai in an area referred to as the magical
world of 1,000 trees. We began with a tour
of the grounds, which include an organic
farm and fishing ponds.
They grew both kinds of rice on the farm,
sticky and Jasmine. I learned that sticky rice
grows on the mountain-sides and needs
little water. It’s super starchy and has to be
soaked in water overnight before you can
cook it. Jasmine grows in patties, like we
grow rice in areas like Crowley, Louisiana.
The cooking experience was very hands on.
I had my own cooking station, which was
stocked with the three essential seasonings:
fish sauce, oyster sauce, and palm sugar.
We would prep our ingredients and our
instructor, Pear (like the tree), would walk
us through how to cook everything. My
favorite part was pounding our own curries
with a mortar and pestle. My arm was sore
for days.
Thailand is very much about communal
eating, so we ate a lot of different food with
a lot of different people. Meals included
several courses — curries with rice, always
multiple curries, never just one; salad, usually
with glass noodles; spring rolls; a soup.
The only pad Thai I had in Thailand I
cooked myself at Thai Farm, but I did eat
a lot of noodles — my favorite one came
from a cart at a the bus station in Chiang
Mai. It was a red coconut curry with wheat
noodles. It was chocked full of chicken and
vegetables and plenty of spicy Thai chilies.
In Chiang Mai we visited the nighttime
bazaar, which was so crowded it felt like
Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. We
touredWat Pho, which are temples, some as
old as 2,000 years.Wat Phra Singh is one of
the most visited and photographed temples
in the world, but somehow I missed the fact
that the famous monks inside were fake. I
kept talking about how zen these monks
were until finally Alton turned to me and
gently explained: “Honey, they’re wax.”
My favorite part of the trip was the Mae
Sa Elephant Camp, about an hour from
Chiang Mai. Nearly 80 elephants come
work at the camp every day. At night
they return to the forest with their guides
(mahouts). Elephants and mahouts are
bonded for life. It’s an amazing relationship,
and elephants are beautiful creatures. I got
an elephant hug, YEAH! We also watched
an elephant named Suda paint a portrait of
small herd walking into the sunset.
Yes, an
elephant painted a painting of other elephants.
He held the brush with his trunk and his
mahout would dip it in paint
.
Of course we
bought a picture.
We also traveled toMae Hong So,a long neck
village. And we spent some time
in Chiang Rai in the northern
part of Thailand exploring the
White Temple and the Black
House. I found heaven. It’s
located on the side of a mountain
in Chiang Rai. I have never seen
so many orchids growing wild.
We spent the rest of our trip in
Bangkok.Wewent to the Chatuchak Weekend Market,
one of the largest markets in the world.The
market is as big as the French Quarter, with
thousands of stalls all crowded together
down tiny little alleyways selling anything
you can possibly imagine. It’s crazy busy —
over 200,000 visitors a day. It’s a must visit
— plan on a whole day. Street food is the
best food in Bangkok. Stir-fries. Curries.
Noodles. Mango sticky rice. Sausages.
Steamed crab. Grilled squid. It’s all cooked
there in the open air.
Small food entrepreneurship is a major
part of the country’s food success. From
street carts to the food stalls in the outdoor
markets, food entrepreneurs (cooks and
bakers) are all focused on one dish, one
really, really good dish.
At Rouses, we look for food entrepreneurs
like that for our bakery. People who make
that one great dish. We work with that
baker in Alabama who makes a great banana
loaf cake, that candymaker in New Orleans
who makes a great praline — whether it’s
Wink’s buttermilk drops, Gracious Bakery’s
croissants, or Bellegarde’s breads, we are
always looking for those products and those
small food entrepreneurs to work with, for
one store or for all of our stores.
“The traditional version of Pad Thai sold from food
carts and food stalls is made with dried shrimp like
we sell at Rouses. Our Gulf Coast fishermen learned
shrimp drying techniques from the Chinese shrimpers
who came to the coast in the mid 1800s.”
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