If Yan can cook, evidently so can we

So it's almost a cliched thing for people to take a Thai cooking course when they come to Chiang Mai; of course we had to, to shore up our macaroni-and-cheese repertoires. A full day of training, including foodstuffs (i.e. aforementioned trip to Severed-Pigs-Head Market), cost us CAD$23 a head (haha).

We received our expert instruction from "Ma", a nice old (and very successful now) cooking instructor who took us to her home and in no time had us on the floor grinding our curry pastes. This was by far the toughest part of the whole process, so it's good to know you can apparently make a big batch and fridge it for months. Everything starts with this little bit of paste--it's pretty incredible.

We ended up making 6 dishes, each, which meant bloated stomachs and takeaway at the end of the day. Nice way to pass the day, and we've ostensibly learned a new skill. Wow did we feel like pros afterwards. No dish took longer than 5-10 minutes to cook, and still edible!

In retrospect, the thing we realised was all the ingredients were fresh fresh fresh and super high-quality, so you can't really go wrong. Even the coconut cream was freshly squeezed in this jumbo extractor, right in front of us. Even if we could gather all the right ingredients in Vancouver, there may not be any conceivable way for us to duplicate the success we had that day. But if you're brave, you're welcome to come over when we get back: we'll try our best not to kill you with our efforts.