The Blue Elephant

I had never mentioned to Cecile that I was looking into cooking schools in BKK & low & behold one of her Xmas presents was a cooking class at The Blue Elephant. I was supposed to be there at 8:45am (on the 22nd) & since I am staying quite a distance away from the school PLUS getting there in rush hour - all that took some careful planning & advice from Veronique & Pierre. I ended up taking a taxi to the closest Skytrain (45 minutes) & then the Skytrain to the stop right in front of the Blue Elephant.

The Skytrain is super - an elevated Metro - efficient, clean, easy to use, crowded but no one pushes.

It is clearly marked where the doors of the skytrain will be & people wait in lines at those markings, like 3 lines per door. Then everyone just moves in in a very organized manner. There are TVs on each side of the car, in each section, with ads, videos & announcing the next station.I think it helps also because the majority of people here are attractive, well-dressed, &/or downright gorgeous. Needless to say, I arrived 20 minutes early at The Blue Elephant.

I relaxed & drank lemongrass tea out of a china pot shaped liked an elephant & waited for the others to arrive. Two other women & myself were taken to a local market selling fruits, veg, fish, meats, etc. & our guide explained things to us. She showed us a woman making rice crepes that are used for spring rolls, etc. I saw all the different types of Thai basil, Thai vegetables, people scrapping fish meat by hand for fish balls & fish patties, and more.

This is a block of palm sugar that the Thai's use a lot in their cooking. It looks & smells much like brown sugar.

These are a male & female fish - it's the male that has the blue lips - sexy!

The photo below is the lady who makes the rice paper crepes. She has a glob of dough in her hand & she wipes it over the pan so that only a tiny bit adheres to the hot surface. It cooks instantly & she only cooks one side.

Needless to say, it was very interesting & now when I go to my Korean market in Silver Spring, I will know what to look for!

The Blue Elephant is a well known restaurant & cooking school, with schools all over the world.

It is very well organized & the entire morning turned out to be so interesting & fun. There were 9 people in the class - one man from Chili who was taking the classes everyday this week, some travel agents from the US & Malaysia here for a conference, a couple from Seattle & moi.
We watched a demonstration of how each dish was prepared, along with a discussion of ingredients, etc. We would then taste the dish & then we went into the large kitchen lab & prepared the dish ourselves. We each had a space with cooking board, ingredients, stone mortar & pestle (yes, we pounded the paste, etc. BY HAND) & a gas burner. The staff would come along & help, give instructions, etc. Once that dish was finished, we put our number on the dish & went back into the demonstration room for the next dish.

We made a total of 5 dishes - red curry paste, coconut soup with chicken, squid salad with lemon grass, red curry beef & pumpkin & deep fried fish with spicy sauce. We then arrived in a private dining room in the restaurant & found our own creations to eat. It was delicious & fun. I hope to re-create all the dishes back in Bethesda!

I enjoyed it so much that I am hoping that Veronique & I will go on Friday. She has never been & I think she would enjoy it just as much as I did. Plus, since we don't have to go to the market, we can sleep a bit later!

That's all for today. Thank you all for your comments. So much fun to read.

Love to all.

To be continued.....