Mamma Noi Cooking School

On the 26th of December we spent the morning at Doi Suthep and the evening at an organic farm, Mamma Noi, learning how to cook traditional thai dishes. We started off at a thai market where our instructor gave us a tutorial on different vegetables and herbs. Then we got to explore the farm. There were pigs and chickens, as well as a greenhouse. Seeing the mushrooms was particularly intriguing to me, because they were growing out of stacks of plastic bottles-- I had never seen this before. The grounds also had a pond, vegetable garden and a beautiful house overlooking it all. We made 3 courses; soup, main dish and curry. There were 4 options for each. I chose to cook: coconut milk soup, cashew chicken and panang curry. Our instructor's name was Aim (she was a ladyboy) and she was so funny because the amount of spice you could handle translated into how sexy you were (according to her). Each time I made a dish it made her laugh because I would say no spice so she would say no sexy. Thai soup uses many, many ingredients for flavor only (you can't actually eat them) so you spend all this time chopping and dicing but then when the soup is ready you're spooning around trying just to eat carrots and mushrooms as opposed to lemon grass and roots- it's a lot of work. When making the curry we had to mash it in a stone bowl until it was paste like. Aim explained to us that thai women who mash the curry well make good wives. After I mashed she laughed and said "you no sexy but you make good wife" -- thanks Aim?? At least I'm not totally hopeless. The curry was delicious but so filling. After three courses Aim brought out sweet, warm bananas in coconut milk for dessert. The class was totally awesome and I would recommend it to anyone traveling to Chiang Mai. I walked away with a cook book showing how to make all of the dishes we learned. They even have a 24 hour hotline so if I have a curry cooking emergency at 3am help is just a phone call away!