"No," I said. "I just want to learn how to cook Thai food right for my demanding wife. It’s she who plans to put up a Thai restaurant, where she shall also be the chief cook."
Instantly, their smiles faded away, understandably so.
I have written many times about our fascination and fondness for Thai food. In the past two decades I have frequented Bangkok, my nostrils and taste buds have been accustomed more and more to the real stuff. Its variety is just mind-boggling, even for someone like me. My macho friends often tease me that instead of going around the sex bars in Phatpong, which is Bangkok’s red light district, I make the rounds of food stalls in alleys instead. "Guilty," I say. Well, to use California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term, I am admittedly a "girlie-man." Isn’t my wife lucky?
Of course, the best tropical fruits are found in Bangkok. I am green with envy of the Thais every time I see all those hybrid sweet tamarind, lanzones, pomelo, mansanitas, atis, durian and their small chilled coconut drink in the shell. And to think they learned much of their agricultural know-how from Filipinos back in the 1960s. Maybe when I am in Bangkok, I can go on a much-needed fruit diet. But that’s only possible if the food hawkers go on strike. And that’s highly improbable.
Three weeks ago, Mary Ann, my sister Carmen McTavish and I took a day course at the Peninsula Bangkok Academy.
"Why do they call it an academy?" Mary Ann asked. "Sounds so rigid and scary like a military school."
We were hoping to be in a more casual and hands-on classroom of aromas, but because of the name, we were prepared to find ourselves in a classroom of lectures and power points.
So, on the appointed date, we came with open minds (and mouths) to the Peninsula Bangkok lobby. We were greeted by its charming PR director Sirinate Meenakul, who in turn introduced us to chefs Khun Sumalee and Khun Areecha, who were going to guide us through the first part of the daylong cooking class with a tour of the Samyan Market. It is a mere 20-minute shuttle boat ride from the Peninsula via the Chao Phraya River. We then motored off to the market. Samyan Market is pricier than other wet markets I have been to, with its pre-selected merchandise for its high quality and freshness (much like our own Seaside Market near Baclaran Church). Like all the other wet markets I have been to in Bangkok, Samyan is also remarkably very clean and odorless. There are absolutely no flies – well, maybe one or two!
Perhaps our government could send an observation team to the acknowledged Venice of the East to take tips on how we can do the same in our country. If the Thais learned about planting rice in Los Baños and have surpassed us in food production, there’s every reason to learn from them this time around, and perhaps duplicate or even better their success. As my hard-to-teach student-cum-wife often threatens me, "You better watch out, sometimes the student ends up better than the teacher."
Anyway, back to the cooking class. From the market, we proceeded back to the hotel’s Thai restaurant Thiptara, the venue for the hands-on cooking lessons. Clustered around a garden courtyard are five traditional fan-cooled dining salas, all handcrafted teakwood pavilions from Ayudya. It is set in a rural surrounding with an antique well, a bridge and a canal, amid lush, tropical foliage. Greeting us were ice-cold towels and glasses of iced lime juice. What a refreshing start after the hot weather at the market!
As soon as we freshened up, we donned our Peninsula aprons and toques, complete with a dishtowel to hang on our hips.
"Wow, it makes me feel like a chef already!" Mary Ann exclaimed.
Our teacher for the day was the hotel’s executive Thai chef, Sumalee Boonek. An award-winning chef, with her Thiptara voted as Asia’s best hotel restaurant in November 2003, this very pleasant and unassuming lady came immaculate in her white chef’s uniform. Instantly, we all liked her.
We were her only students that day and our cooking skills differ very much. Although Mary Ann is an occasional "can-can" cook ("If she can, so can you.") she is great at taking down notes, which admittedly I am very bad at. (I call her my "laptop sexytary." She takes down notes while sitting on my lap, hehehe!). Carmen is a restaurateur and an adept cook and I am a not-so-bad cook myself.
Peninsula Academy is for all levels and will carry on the scheduled class for one to 90 students. They offer a one-day course, as well as two- and three-day programs, where the students get to bring home certificates. However, all students have to be hotel guests.
The first one to try cooking hands-on was Carmen. She was taught how to turn, twist and lift the ladle while stirring the popular phad thai noodles. It is an art that has to be executed with grace, I understand. During my turn, chef Sumalee showed me how easy it was to make kaeng kiew warn moo, a dish of pork in green curry sauce. Next was dessert, thab thim siam, diced water chestnuts made to look like red pomegranate with coconut milk syrup. It was Mary Ann’s turn to have a go at boiling the syrup. Yes, that bit she did without a hitch.
"I’m getting the hang of it," she said excitedly.
Our cooking class was conducted outdoors by the terrace facing the Chao Phraya River, with a view of the boats and barges passing by. The constant breeze blowing, the sound of water falling from a terra-cotta wall and the chirping of the birds made it all seem like a delightful rural experience, made more wonderful with the aroma of food wafting in the air.
Each dish we cooked, we sampled right after. After the class, we were supposed to have a Thai lunch prepared by our teacher chef. It would be the dishes we cooked plus more, we were told. But having had a full breakfast, coupled with the snacks we tried at the wet market and sampling the dishes we cooked, we begged to skip lunch and proposed to take it that evening instead. And so that night, we made sure we got a table at Thiptara for our wonderful dinner of chef Sumalee’s home-style Thai dishes, served in traditional blue and white ceramics (and that deserves another story).
With the hotel’s permission, I am reproducing the Peninsula Bangkok recipes. Chef Sumalee’s version of phad thai has its noodles moist with two-colored egg. And the secret here, I learned, is not to beat the raw egg but to fry the egg as in cooking a sunny side up, halfway through breaking the yolk and folding the two together. She was so generous to grant our requests for other recipes that she sent up more to our room. I am not sure if this is normally done upon request, or perhaps it was their kind gesture to reciprocate as I also taught them hands-on how to make chicken pork adobo, after discovering that it is chef Khun Sumalee’s favorite dish. Maybe one day, they will serve chicken adobo Thai-style at the Thiptara.
Happy cooking and eating!