Cookery Magic
My new friend Lisa from Italy invited me to go to a SE Asian cooking class with her at a place called Cookery Magic. The class which normally has between 6-8 people in it, is held in the owners home. The owner of Cookery Magic was this wonderful woman, Ruqxana. Her parents are Indian, but she was born and raised in Singapore. Her cooking skills are self taught and she has traveled the world exploring her culinary passion. We were very lucky to be the only 2 people in the class that day so we were involved in everything. I knew I was going to like Ruqxana from the first moment I laid eyes on her fridge and saw this:
The theme for the day was Thai
Menu
Tum Yum Kung (Prawn Soup)
Som Tham (Papaya Salad)
Gaeng Phed Kai (Red Chicken Curry)
These are all items I have ordered at a Thai restaurant before and LOVED eating but had no idea how to attempt to prepare these things at home. I had a lot to learn...
First thing we made was the prawn stock for the prawn soup.
Main ingredients:
prawn heads with shells
lemon grass- freshly bruised- you do this by pounding it with a pestle
Galangal- blue ginger
Coriander root- (bruised)- this is the same as cilantro (took me 4 months to finally figure that out!)
Kaffir lime leaves -(torn and bruised) these smell amazing!
Lemon rind, small onion
8-10 whole chili pads (bruised)
water
We brought the stock to boil and let it simmer for about and hour and a half.
Next we made the red curry paste to use in the chicken curry.
We did everything from scratch and everything was cooked the same was it would be done in a traditional Thai village. No modern day equipment (like a blender) to speed up the process!
We had to crush, grind and pound all of the ingredients together for what felt like forever. Here Lisa is taking her turn, it was actually very theraputic once you got a rhythm going.
Next step we heated up coconut cream in a saucepan and added our red curry paste, cooked it until "oil starts to separate and it is fragrant", translation wait till Ruqxana tells you its ready.
We then added chicken and a bunch of other ingredients and put that on low heat for about 20 minutes.
Last thing to make was the Papaya salad which again required lots of pounding with the mortar and pestle. I am learning this is something I need to add to my kitchen supplies.
Final product:
We all sat in the garden to eat our wonderful lunch. Not to brag, but this was some of the best Thai food I have ever tasted.
Ruqxana was wonderful and made everything seem so simple which lead Lisa and I to make a promise to each other than we would make this again for our men in a few weeks time. Lisa, I hope you were taking good notes!
Labels:
Family and Friends,
Living in Singapore
I enjoyed so much the time spent together in Ruqxanas' home... so funny!!!
Reading your post it seems that now you are very qualified to prepare a perfect thai menu so...
Let's do it again!!! But please... when we will do it, don't be sad if it will not have exactly the same taste as this one that we did yesterday! ;)
That looks sooooo delicious!! YUM!
Yum indeed!! Looks wonderful and I bet it tastes really delicious! Cooking is yet another one of your talents Lynn!!