Thai Cooking Class

The Menu: Pad Thai, Green Papaya Salad, Chicken Coconut Green Curry, Spicy Basil Shrimp

For my birthday this year, Sam's mom and dad gave me the money for a Sur la Table cooking class. Sam decided he would like to take one with me, so for Christmas I gave him an IOU. We decided to take "Secrets of Thai Cooking"since we loved our 2011 trip to Thailand so much.

We decided to take the class on Monday night, since it was right after we got back from our trip home for the holidays. I wouldn't recommend coming hungry, because we had to cook everything before we ate, and our 6:30 p.m. class was supposed to be over at 8:30 p.m., but that's when we started eating. Sam was about to pass out by the time we finally got to serve ourselves.

Sam was the star pupil! Our instructor brought him up to stir the curry.

All in all, the class wasn't what either Sam or I expected. There were 14 of us, situated into teams of 4, 4, 3 and 3. Each team prepared a portion of the recipe, and then the chef had us take turns preparing the final dish.

For the most part, we just watched other people putting it together and ate dinner super late. It felt like we were basically paying for the recipes, which we did get to take home with us, but we probably could have found them online. The techniques she used, such as how to cook the food in the wok, was pretty much what I remembered from the streets of Thailand.

One of the downsides to the recipes is the ingredients are all, obviously, pretty exotic. While the chef assured us that everything can be found at the 99 Ranch Market, the items come in larger quantities and have a shelf life of roughly three months. So we'd have to make the whole meal more frequently than once a month, and that's unlikely.

All our dishes prepped for dinner!