smokin'

No mum, it's ok. I mean the bacon kind. The original title of this post was Cooking, but I though that was just far to simple.

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time I got off my ever expanding rear and took to the streets. After a few minutes of wandering with no aim at all, I went home and thought of things to do. A Thai cooking course seemed a good idea, so I did one.

On the edge of one of the busier roads in Bangkok stands a building. On one side, ruinous lean to sheds of corrugated iron. On the other, a skyscraper, and in front the skytrain rails. Right in the middle of a large concrete expanse stands an incongruously decorated blue and yellow mansion, known as the Blue Elephant Restaurant.

It's fairly well known, but apparently suffers from being quite expensive and not actually that nice. Anyway, I booked myself in for the morning course (with Market visit!) on a Wednesday.

We were all sat down in a room with little writing desks, supplied with some recipes and the dishes were prepared in front of us for our amusement. One niggle was that the lady doing the cooking insisted on varying the dishes as much as she stuck to the recipe. Ah well.

I found at the time of cooking that it was all really easy. I began to relax into my role as master chef, I cooked with flourish and flair, I tossed my hair back as I tossed in the vegetables. I sliced and diced and stirred. However, it quickly became apparent that it would be much more difficult if they hadn't put out the correct amounts of every ingredient in little bowls in front of you.

Ok, so Thai cooking isn't that hard as far as I can tell, it's just a matter of preparing everything carefully before you start cooking. Once anything is put on the heat it's all go and there's no time to think "Now, should these red peppers be sliced or diced, and how thick?". It's actually rather fun throwing everything you so carefully chopped up in at once and mixing it around.

I can now cook Prawn curry with Jackfruit (or as I shall do it, Chicken curry with whatever you like), Chicken and Cashew nuts (an old favourite), Mango Salad with Deep Fried Red Snapper (at least, I could if I had any deep fried Red Snapper) and one of those horrible watery soups with unexpected bits of scraggly meat floating in them. Yeurgggh.

All in all, a success.

Dom.