Asia Scenic Cooking School - Chiang Mai

Our Class (that is Mam on the left).

I am supposed to be starting Culinary Training at George Brown this January, although it looks like I might have to defer for a semester while I try to organize funding. Anyway, I came to Asia with the plan of attending a few different cooking schools to pick up a few tricks.
I spent a day checking the different options out before finally deciding on Asia Scenic Cooking School. Walking into the school I received a friendly greeting, from Mam the main teacher, and a break down of what we would be learning.
The other schools, which seem to be more popular, like Baan Thai and others, were more like factories than schools. All the prep work was done for you, and in some cases you had little choice in which dishes you learned to make. Not so for Asia Scenic, every step was hands on, to the point of making your own pastes, and tasting and smell herbs from their backyard organic garden. If different students chose different dishes you also got to watch them prepare their food, essentially learning them too.
All the photos from this post are the property of Asia Scenic and are reproduced with permission (Thanks Mam)

Making noodle dishes,
Pad Thai for me, just to see what if anything I was missing

Learning to properly wrap spring rolls,
for some reason I have always found it harder
than hand rolling Vietnamese fresh rolls.

The class proudly showing off their spring rolls.

Making deep fried bananas, made before the mains
as they are often eaten cold from little plastic bags from street vendors.

Prep work...chopping garlic

That's me cooking up some Cashew Nut Chicken

Our class relaxing after gorging
ourselves on all the food we made.

Chiang Mai BBQ

I couldn't tell you where this place is, or what it is call, other than by it is close to the shell station outside the moat. It is all you can eat for 139B/person (or just over $4/person Canadian), however you pay 30B for not cleaning your plate. For somebody like me this means a long slow meal, but one you can relish in.

I had been recently suffering from "slow digestion" but the Thai chemist/pharmacist totally sorted me out so this was the first real full-on meal I had eaten in days.

Old friends we met here 2 years ago, Greg and Janine, brought us here with their friend Eve who had recently made the move from Koh Lanta to Chiang Mai. These all-you-can-eat BBQ joints are common in Chiang Mai, and are quite popular with locals. Apart from us, the only falang there was with his local girlfriend. I had a rather long and interesting conversation with a man who spoke no English, and I of course speak no Thai.

The Table Is Set.

You toss a big chunk of fat on the top
so that meats don't stick. The juices run
down the grill and flavour the broth where you cook veg & prawns

Eve Working The Q

Janine teaching me the art of cleaning
a cooked prawn. And yes, I did suck out the head bits!

Greg starting his own prawn genocide.

The mid-meal prawn body count.
These are just Greg's. Ours paled in comparison.

Prawn corpses and Chang beer.

Greg's final prawn body count.

Pad Thai - Part 1 of ?

Asia is a land of amazing street food, especially so in Thailand. While many lament the loss of traditional home cooking, the quality of what is available on the streets puts Toronto to shame, even with our new expanded "healthy", "international" options. Even the worst street Pad Thai is freshly prepared to order, unlike those hot dogs that sit, drying out, on the top rack of the grill only to be finally sliced and cooked again to oblivion.
We grabbed this Pad Thai from some random stall lining the walls of a downtown Bangkok park.

Wanderlust...

Our first wedding anniversary is fast approaching and with it a full calendar year since I have been outside of Canada. Abby and I casually resolved to go away for 5 weeks this November, at first I was a little unsure that we actually would. A number of events have conspired to give Abby a year off of school, so we plan to take advantage of the time off. So it is official now; we are Thailand bound!
The plan is to spend most of our time kicking around the Islands. Friends of ours, The Loves of Ol' Blighty, suggested this little paradise on Koh Phangan. We can't make it our first stop though, as this seems exactly the type of place where a week turns into a month and then we have to rush to the border before our visas expire. Not that 5 weeks on Phangan would be a bad thing.
After the 5 weeks Abby will have to come home and return to work, I don't have to though. I am going to stay behind to take a two week Thai cooking course.
I am so excited!