In Chiang Rai, I attended Suwannee’s cooking class, which was one of my best experiences in Thailand!Since high season just ended it was only me and James from Australia so we had a nice little private session with Suwannee from 9am-1pm. She personally picked us up from our accommodations with her car and drove us to the local market in Chiang Rai. Once we got there she started explaining a lot about the food in general and particularly about the fresh ingredients we were going to use for our dishes that James and I got to pick in the morning. We also got to try a lot of things like grilled sticky rice, little Thai pancakes, sugar cane candies, we smelled all kinds of different herbs and leaves and last but not least picked all our ingredients like shrimp, chicken, curry paste, koriander, basil, eggplant, papaya, …

After our little tasting experience we headed to Suwannee’s house and after a little break started our first thai cooking class. She would always tell us which ingredients we needed and how to cut them and then we put them on a plate so that we could see later what we needed for each dish. We started out with some extremely fresh and delicious papaya salad – which is more than likely to become my favorite meal back home – followed by some sweet and sour shrimp soup, red curry with chicken and finally some banana in coconut milk with just the right amount of sweetness. We cooked everything in a wok and of course all the dishes were super delicious but at the same time surprisingly simple. What I especially liked about the food and the whole cooking was that all the ingredients were fresh from the market: even the coconut milk we bought immediately after it got pressed out of the nut – and there was really not a lot of sugar involved in the cooking.
James was a funny guy and Suwannee a really sweet lady so we had a lot of fun together and I personally learned a whole lot about cooking and different kinds of food and ways to prepare it.

I’m definitely going to try all the dishes I cooked here when I get back home and since I’m basically a Thai cuisine chef now you should better start signing up for my exclusive cook out à la Lena at the 5 star restaurant by the soccer courts in the beautiful half-timbered city of Goslar. Prepare yourselves for some food babies and taste bud explosions!

And if you’re interested in learning cooking with Suwannee as well:

Give it a try and book your class here!

Some impressions from the local market, where we got all the fresh ingredients for our dishes and where we got to try a lot of different food and sweets

Traditional Thai tea, coffee, sugar and creamer as a welcome drink at the market

Fresh shrimp for “Tom Yam Goong”

Candy made of sesame seeds mixed with sugar cane – so simpel but at the same time so good

Supposedly the best donuts in town – I gotta admit that they were pretty good although I usually don’t like donuts

Ant-eggs (don’t worry I didn’t try those) – they’re a delicacy here

Sticky rice with coconut milk in bamboo – soooo good!

1st Course: Som Tam – Papaya Salad

2nd Course: Tom Yum Kung – Hot and Sour Prawn Soup

3rd Course: Keng Ped Gai – Red Curry with Chicken and Homegrown Mixed Rice

4th Course: Banana in Coconut Milk 

Suwannee at work – she’s an amazing cook and such a sweet person

James and I had a lot of fun cutting vegetables and cooking Thai food

Thank you, Suwannee, for this amazing Thai cooking experience!