When we were planning a recent trip to Thailand I heard the same thing from almost everybody I spoke to, "the food will be amazing!", and they were right, it was. In fact, there's a lot about Thailand that's amazing: its history, its people, its ecology and yes, the food.
But if there's one thing that I did not have high hopes for when we decided to travel to Thailand, it was potato. Nevertheless, I resolved to keep an open mind and while we travelled around that beautiful country, I looked for my favourite vegetable wherever we went
Within a couple of days of arriving we visited the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. This market is huge and a great place to sample street food and pick up anything from clothes to cooking implements. It's the best market we visited in Thailand.
I thought I had struck gold when I saw this little fellow:
But what is it if not a potato? I'll tell you, it's a plastic potato! Purchased from this market stall selling plastic fruit and vegetables for shop and restaurant displays!
I bought one of course and it not has pride of place on our book shelf. My quest for the Thai potato was clearly not going to be as easy as I'd hoped.
There were further false-alarms. While staying in Bangkok's Sukhumvit district, a short Sky Train ride from the city centre, we had some of the nicest street food we ate in the country. I was intrigued by several market stalls selling what I initially thought were new potatoes:
Fooled again! These were actually rather tasty little fruit that were not too dissimilar to lychee!
It wasn't until we reached Chiang Mai in Thailand's north that I was able to speak to a real expert in Thai cooking and in doing so complete my quest. Eating amazing food when you travel to a distant place is one thing, but you want to be able to experience those flavours again when you get home. It was for that reason that we decided to do a Thai cookery course.
There are many places offering excellent cookery courses in Chiang Mai, and in Thailand generally. We visited The "Galangal Cooking Studio", which was brilliant. The school is very friendly and extremely well organised, taking you to a local market to buy your ingredients before teaching you to cook a number of dishes of your choice. Neung's expert tuition not only meant we ended up with a delicious meal, but she was also able to provide really helpful advice on suitable alternative ingredients where the dishes involved ingredients hard to source in Europe. If you're in Chiang Mai and interested in a cookery course, I would highly recommend this place: http://www.galangalcooking.com/
I opted for the Massaman Curry, on of my favourite Thai dishes that has Muslim origins. The strong flavours of the rich, spicy source and the meat are perfectly offset by wonderfully creamy chunks of luscious, refreshing potato.
I was delighted with the end result and this is a dish that I intend to spend a lifetime trying to perfect at home.
Thank you Thailand.
I didn't see much in the way of hummus Adam...
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