Saturday, 7 November 2009. I had the pleasure of taking a hands on Thai cooking class run by David Thompson in Brisbane today. It inspired me to finally start writing about my food experiences.

About three years ago I took a cooking class up at the Spirit House in Yandina, instructed by the head chef at the time. He mentioned David was running master classes at that time but that it was booked out. So when I found out James St Cooking was hosting him, I just had to make sure I got a spot for this privilege.

THAI FOOD

I thought about what it is I like about Thai food...It has a lot of the elements from various cuisines I was brought up with...hot chillies, coconut, coriander, seafood, and lime...

This dip was the kick start of our cooking class. There's nothing like chilli before breakfast to get the adrenalin going! The dip had small prawns sitting in it and was served with sliced green mangoes.

Crab stir fried with Curry Powder
bpuu pat pong garee
The second dish demonstrated by David was this crab dish. It was just absolutely delicious served hot (and not so much when its gone cold). The people in our group didn't seem to want to get their hands dirty with eating this dish. I definitely wasn't complaining about that. With tomalley spread through it, the dish had a richer crab taste.

Prawns with Vermicelli
gung op wun sen
The third dish was surprisingly yummy with noodles cooked in a clay pot in the oven. I think the key ingredient in this one was David's handpicked oyster sauce (which we can't get here at the moment). Even though there were prawns in this one I think the hero was the vermicelli. I could taste the fresh ginger, garlic and the sweetness from the oyster sauce.

Grilled Squid
pla meuk yang

The fourth dish demonstrated by David got me a bit squirmish when I had to prepare it. We had to remove the top half of the head with the beak and the eyes bit. The purple skin was left on to give it a bit of colour.



Dipping Sauce
nahm jim






David served the squid with this hot, salty sweet sour sauce, which was similar to the morning kick start sauce. It is made with 'scud' chillies but because it was not finely pound, not all of the heat was released (David's anecdote). I really enjoyed the dipping sauce as I could taste the nice balance of lime, chilli, garlic, salt and sweetness. The sauce that one of the participants actually made was a bit more sour and didn't have the right balance - it was also a bit more pound up than David's version. I liked the rusticness of the chunky dipping sauce though.

Beef Stir Fried with oyster sauce, onions and Thai basil
neua pat nahm man hoi













The demonstration of this dish I would have to say was the star of the show. With the curling of the flame up the outside of the wok, the addition of oil created a huge flame that went up as high as his head! It was interesting that David kept a bit of the fat attached to the meat and the onion was dry fried first. It was also interesting how he added a dash of vinegar to cut some of the oil. The dish surprisingly came out with a slightly thickened sauce, without the addition of any thickner. The dish was also surprisingly brown with browned bits being present.

White Sticky Rice with Mango, with Sweet Coconut Cream










This dish had a lot of steps to get to the serving stage. It uses glutinous rice and is piled in a mound and then steamed in a domed pot. This recipe also uses freshly made coconut cream and I found the steps so involved but so worth it. It's quite a different taste to prepackaged coconut cream. I'd forgotten how I used to help make coconut cream as a child. The coconut would be laborously grated with a small grater, and then soaked in water for a little and then squeezed to extract the cream. The method that David went through however was much more honed to extract the cream. And instead of the labour intensive grating he combined coconut flesh with some fragrant water in a blender/food processor.

The last dish was Siamese Watercress stir-fried with Gapi (the watercress is called Ong Choy in Chinese). I had a smell of the fresh gapi David had made from scratch. Interestingly, it didn't smell like rotting prawns like you would normally get in the shrimp paste from Chinatown. To make gapi (shrimp paste) he had a recipe which combined fresh prawn meat with gapi and then left out in the sun to dry. Note its prawn meat, and not the shells.

If you want the actual recipes, I believe all of these recipes are in David's latest cookbook.