Mr. Miagi

On our second day in Chaing Mai, we had an early start at the Chilli Club Cookery School. Conveniently located in our guest house, we had all of about 15 metres to walk to get there! Our class was of 5 for the day, Eoin and I and 3 Germans, Jochem, Nicole and Christina.

Some introductions and we were straight into the work. We each had to select 5 dishes to cook for the day. Between us we chose Tom Yum Gung (Hot and Sour Soup), Spicy Coconut and Chicken Soup, Green Curry, Red Curry, Pad Thai, Stir Fry chicken and basil, Spicy Papaya Salad, Spicy Glass noodle salad and finally Bananas in Coconut milk and Mango and sticky rice. Although each one of us cooked only 5 dishes, we were working together, so hopefully we

Our teacher for the day was a Thai man, a trained chef who for some reason, reminded me of Mr. Miagi! Once our dishes were selected, we set off, armed with wicker baskets, to the local market. Walking through it, you can't help but regret that we no longer trade like this. Everything was absolutely fresh – fruit and veg just picked, meat just slaughtered and seafood – well most of that was still alive. There were stalls for fruit, stalls for vegetables, stalls for shellfish, stalls for noodles and rice, stalls for spices, stalls for meat, stalls for eggs, stalls for coconuts (which like in Sri Lanka are a little industry unto themselves). Its trading old style, the market opens from sunrise to sunset, every day. People shop as they need, no weekly trolley load shopping here. The smells are overpowering, that bizarre combination of spice, soil, meat, fish and hard human labour. It hangs in your nostrils long after you've left, which we eventually have to do – there's some serious cooking to be done.

Returning to the Chilli Club, we spent the next half hour chopping and peeling, slicing and dicing, grating and crushing. Mr. Miagi (honestly, it was uncanny), showed us his karate style methods of dealing with garlic and chilli (ingenious) and then helped us to separate out the ingredients for each dish, and then the real cooking began.

The morning session saw us prepare our soups, Eoin did a Tom Yum Gung and I did a spicy chicken and coconut soup. We followed these up with green and red curries and finished before lunch with Pad Thai and stir fried chicken with basil. After completing each dish, we sat down and tasted the fruits of our labour. With Mr. Miagi supervising our preparation, there was no call for modesty, it was all delicious! My mouth is watering now just thinking about it!

We took a badly needed break for lunch. Not that we had been working particularly hard, but we had eaten so much, we needed to move around a bit. So Schmo and I retired to a little coffee shop down the road and passed the time digesting! Shortly after the rest of the city began considering lunch, we returned, rested but no less stuffed to prepare the remainder of the dishes.


The afternoon session was going to introduce us to some salads and desserts and a little bit of decoration! We commenced with preparing the sticky rice for the mango and stick rice dessert, which I have to say is among the nicest things I have ever tasted!!!

Mr. Miagi strenuously emphasised to us, – its not how long you COOOOK the sticky rice, it is how long you SOAAAAK the sticky rice (try to imagine the original Mr. Miagi saying this and you are some way to seeing what our Mr. Miagi was like!)

While our sticky rice SOAAAAAKED, we moved on with the salads - one of the big triumphs of the day. Delicious, light, flavoursome, healthy salads. Schmo prepared a spicy papaya salad and I did a spicy glass noodle salad. They were quick, easy to make and absolutely scrumptious – I can see frequent trips to the asian food market and spicy salads for lunch in work when we get back!

Made an attempt at some garnishes – a rose made from tomato! Messy, tedious, far more time and effort than I would probably bother to expend at home, but it was fun!

Finally dessert – yum! After correctly SOAAK-ing our sticky rice and completing the cooking part, we got down to the real business, eating it! Mango and sticky rice is just a little bit of heaven on a plate! I also got to taste the bananas cooked in coconut milk and we finished off by pinching some of Jochem's spring rolls – also delicious.

The good news is, we each got a little recipe book to take home with us, so we can (hopefully) make a stab at recreating these dishes when we get back! Can't promise it will taste like a Mr. Miagi supervised dish, but we'll give it a bash!

Please sir? Can I have some more?