If Southern Thailand is about the beach and the party, and Central Thailand is rich in history, then Northern Thailand is the cultural apex. This region is very proud of its Lanna heritage and an expression of their cultural roots is demonstrated in their cuisine and incredibly intricate handwoven textiles.
With the lush mountains as a backdrop, this relaxed and vibrant city welcomes more tourists every year than any other city in Thailand, save Bangkok, and it is easy to understand why. A place to delve deeper into more enlightening and enriching aspects of Thai culture, Chiang Mai offers an extensive list of cooking schools, thai massage courses and meditation retreats.
The team!
Although eating regional cuisine is delightful and something we enjoy very much, there is something very satisfying about learning to actually create the meals ourselves. In order to try and get a more hands-on experience, we signed up for a full-day cooking course on an organic farm about 15kms outside of the city at the appropriately named, Thai Farm Cooking School.
The beginning of our course started off at a local market where our chef and teacher walked through the market-stall maze with us describing the five ingredients we would use to make each of our dishes.
And with those five ingredients: coconut milk, tom yum paste, fish sauce, chillies, and soy sauce, we began to understand how and why Thai food is so simple yet complex.
Fresh coconut milk
Mangosteens and Rambutans!
Every Thai dish plays on the five basic sense profiles: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and spicy. Essentially, Thai cooking places emphasis on lightly prepared dishes with strong aromatic components and a spicy edge.
Renowned Thai chef, McDang, explains it best:
What is Thai food? Every country in the world has its own food profile. It reflects its culture, environment, ingenuity and values. In the case of Thailand, these words come to mind: intricacy; attention to detail; texture; color; taste; and the use of ingredients with medicinal benefits, as well as good flavor.
We not only pay attention to how a dish tastes: we are also concerned about how it looks, how it smells, and how it fits in with the rest of the meal. We think of all parts of the meal as a whole – sum rap Thai (the way Thais eat), is the term we use for the unique components that make up a characteristically Thai meal.
Each chef got to choose one of three dishes in five categories:
- Curry (paste and dish): Green, red, yellow
- Soup: tom yam, coconut, thai vegetable
- Main: chicken with cashewnut, sweet and sour chicken, chicken with holy basil
- Noodle: spring rolls, pad thai, pad see-ew
- Dessert: banana in coconut milk; mango and sticky rice; pumpkin in coconut milk
Jasmin rice, red curry and chicken with cashew nut
Jasmin rice, chicken with holy basil, and green curry
Thom yum soup with shrimp, extra YUM included!
First we wandered through the farm and as our instructor told us about all the plants and herbs around us and how they are used, we got to pick the ingredients for our dishes! It doesn’t get much more fresh than that.
The main fresh ingredients we picked and used for each of our dishes were:
- kaffir lime, leaves and fruit
- chillis
- bitter eggplant
- coconut
- long beans
- galangal (siamese ginger)
- lemongrass
- sweet eggplant
- thai ginseng
- thai parsley
- holy basil
- sweet basil
- shallot
- garlic
- corriander
- tumeric
In addition to the herbs we used in our course, the farm had tons of pineapple shrubs, mango trees and banana trees.
Between each course we got to enjoy the best part of cooking- eating! And not only that, we didn’t have to do any prep or clean- up. Talk about luxury cooking!
We love cooking and we think of food as a window in the heart and soul of a nation. Often, cultural subtleties are best understood through food- the ingredients used, the methods of preparation, and the way in which the food is eaten and shared.
Thai cuisine is an expression of honed knowledge of local ingredients and a desire to create food that not only nourishes the body but also the spirit of community. Thai food is meant to be shared! Along every soi (alley) you can find small groups of Thais huddled around a fold-up table, sitting on squatty plastic chairs, each taking turns dipping little balls of sticky rice into the multitude of dishes that surround them.
All photographs taken by and property of : Donald McFarlane / Farlane Photography
A Tale of Wanderlust 