Today, it’s all about the food! These are two experiences that helped us understand (and devour) really good Thai food.
Stop One was a lunch at NAA Cooking School at the Ninety Nine Guesthouse in Sukhothai. Or rather, Stop 1.1, because we came back for Stop 1.2 on the next day for dinner because we all enjoyed the lunch so much.
The school is named after its creator and host, Naa. You can see just how joyous she is.
She started her business as a B&B, but discovered that people really wanted to learn to cook what they ate while staying at the B&B. So now, Naa focuses exclusively on cooking lessons. She’s full of good spirit, fun stories, and passion for her local food.
We didn’t participate in any of her cooking classes, but we were able to watch her and her team prepare our dishes.
And this is what they prepared for us when we came back for dinner.
We’re embarrassed that we didn’t write down exactly what each was. But we know the big pot holds a delicious massaman curry. Massaman curry is a staple throughout the country, and typically is not particularly spicy. The name massaman reveals its heritage from muslim communities of the south of Thailand and neighboring Malaysia.
One of the hallmarks of massaman curry is the impressive roster of herbs and spices that go into it: black peppercorns, cumin and coriander seeds, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, salt, roasted mace, roasted coconut, red dried chilies, galangal, lemongrass, garlic, and shallots. The warm spices — cinnamon, cloves, cardamom — give it a feeling of sweetness. This is one of our favorite Thai curries.
There’s fried chicken with holy basil. Holy basil is different from the Mediterranean basil that we Westerners are familiar with. It has a spicier, more clove-like flavor and aroma.
And two finely chopped dishes, one with pork, the other with chicken — and lots of herbs and spices.
Accompanied by some nice fresh vegetables.
You find that little bowl on most tables. It’s a vinegar full of little slices of spicy chilies. Often, just a couple spoonfuls of just the spicy vinegar are enough to add some zing to your dish. Eat the little chili slices at your own risk!
Dessert was something new for us. The compote-looking part is a local fruit whose name we forgot to make a note of. Cooked up, it has a gelatinous texture. The yellow bits are corn! You pour nice thick coconut cream over it. Fascinating mixture of textures, sweetness, saltiness, and unexpected corn.
Sorry we can’t send you some of this food to taste. For us, these dishes had clearer and fresher flavors that what we’d ever had in Thai restaurants at home or even in other restaurants on this trip.
Naa offered a down-home recipe book from her kitchen. We and just about everyone else on our tour bought a copy. We’ll have to see how we do at home.
On our next food-prep stop, both the setting and the lessons were authentically rustic and hands-on. Stop Two is open-air, on the shores of the Mae Taeng River, a bit north of Chiang Mai city.
We arrived at this activity spot by river raft. Maybe not strictly necessary, but fun.
Along the way, we saw evidence of the catastrophic floods in the region that occurred last October. The flooding significantly eroded the river banks. In some cases, undermining foundations. Our day was calm, sunny, perfect temperature — so different from the destruction of just a few months ago.
We arrived at a collection of rustic wood tables and benches and roof structure, and some cool water with pandan leaf for spice. We found pandan leaf throughout Thai dishes; it’s used more for the green color it gives the food than its subtle flavor.
Our host told us right away to roll up our sleeves because we were going to make our own lunch.
First, though, she showed us how they make sticky rice. Sticky, or glutinous, rice is a staple in this part of Thailand. Glutinous rice comes from a specific variety of rice. We were both surprised about how simply and directly sticky rice is prepared. A big pile of washed rice goes into a cheesecloth-like bag in a woven basket. The covered basket sits atop a pot of boiling water. It steams for about 20 minutes and then the rice is done. And delicious.
We kneaded raw pork and chicken parts with garlic and onion, and put the bits on skewers. One of the team from the school was a master griller, so that we couldn’t mess that up.
We all shared in peeling, slicing, and chopping vegetables and herbs for the stir-fried pork and chicken dishes.
We shaved green papaya, and cut up tomatoes, small crunchy local eggplant, long beans (or snake beans!), cabbage, carrots, cucumbers and limes for a very fresh and very spicy green papaya salad.
Sorry, no photos of us all chowing down. All this food prep took about an hour and a half, and we were hungry, without a priority of photo documentation.
It was great fun!
A coda to all this food experience is that we gathered later that day just before dusk at a park site. Our lunch hosts had a bit more for us.
First we received an introductory lesson about Thai writing.
Maybe you flash painfully back on some grade-school experience. But we both found it fascinating. Day in day out, we passed by Thai signs all over the place, of course with absolutely no clue about how the system works. It turns out that the Thai characters were invented by King Ramkhamhaeng the Great in 1283 CE. He developed the Thai script from Khmer precedents, which in turn came from Indian scripts.
There are 21 consonant sounds (although there are 44 consonant letters — you just have to know which to use), and 32 vowels. 32 vowels! Oh, and there are five tones, which our Western ears can’t even hear.
Our hosts showed us how to write our names in Thai script.
Very interesting, and we’re very glad there wasn’t a quiz afterwards.
And that they provided food — lots of food!
January 2025