AngelaLees in het Nederlands
One and a half week ago I came back from a wonderful trip through northern Thailand. What a wonderful country! I will show you more about that in a follow-up article. In this article I put the spotlight on Tripadvisor top rated Thai cooking school Zab-E-Lee in Chiang Mai, where I followed a cooking course.
Zabb-E-Lee
[dropcap]Z[/dropcap]ab-E-Lee is the in Chiang Mai, Thailand, situated company of 28-years young Thai woman named Anne. She runs her company since 1.5 year and by now has half of her family working for her.
Zabb-E-Lee’s cooking studio
Twice a week Thai food
At home I cook and eat at least twice a week Thai food, as I love Thai food. So when I heard about the Tripadvisor top rated Thai cooking school Zabb-E-Lee, I hàd to book a course. As such, I was picked up by Zabb-E-Lee’s owner by car on a hot Tuesday afternoon, while my boyfriend flew over the Thai jungle.
Food shopping at the local market
My cooking course started at the local food market in Chiang Mai old town. Fon, the sister of the cooking school’s owner gave us a lecture on typical Thai fruits and vegetables, while letting us feel and smell the products.
Pink eggs, durian and octopus
Against my expectations the market seemed very clean and tidy and the products looked fresh. The merchants primarily had specialty shops, like rice, oils, fish, vegetable and fruit shops. Furthermore I found pink eggs, the infamous for its smell the libido-increasing durian and octopus (a.k.a. squid) on barbecue. Even the insect eater could find something to sooth its appetite on this cute market.
Guilty pleasure: I love octopus!
This cheecky girl gave us a lecture about about the ingredients that we were going to cook with.
Fresh veggies and tidy market stalls.
Curcuma; a powerful root vegetable that I often cook with.
Cooking, baking and stir-frying
After this lecture we headed to the cooking studio. The studio has room for at least 10 students. About 10 stoves are set-up in U-shape (see picture at the top). In the same space are a big working table and a big dining table. The whole studio is quite cute and cozy.
Sweet treat: the yellow is made from coconut sugar and the white is made from coconut cream.
The course
The course went as follows: first we followed the teachers cutting instructions. Second we followed her instructions on how to boil, stir-fry or bake our ingredients. Than we took time to eat what we made. We repeated this with every course.
In the end the cooking course took about 4 hours. I can tell you: it is quite tiring, because you’re standing a lot. If you decide to follow this cooking class, keep that in mind (eg. if you have difficulty standing, back problems etcetera.).
I liked it so much!
At the end of the cooking course I was stuffed. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat all of it, although everything tasted really good. This is what I actually made:
The soup based on coconut milk, with lemongrass, parsley, carrot, ginger and nice big pieces shitake.
Spring rolls, one of my favorite dishes. You could already find a recipe for Thai spring rolls here.
Curry based on coconut milk with basil. The little green balls are mini eggplants. I scooped out the red chillies, because somehow I felt that they were really too spicy for me.
Follow a course at the cooking school!
Have you planned to visit Chiang Mai any time soon and would you like to follow the cooking course at cooking school Zabb-E-Lee? Please contact the owner via its website (click here), or read the reviews on TripAdvisor. Converted I paid € 25, – for the course, which included a pick-up and being brought home by car and a recipe book.
Ps: don’t forget to tell the owner hello from me!
Question
Have you also followed this cooking course? What are your thoughts?
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