Small House Thai Cooking School

"A little more fish sauce, please."

In the weeks leading up to our Chiang Mai trip, we scoured travel guides for the perfect cooking course. We settled on Small House Thai Cooking School, run by a former Four Seasons trainee named Arm, who is very kind and talkative. This is the smallest cooking school in Chiang Mai, with a 4-person cap. You cook in Arm's cozy wooden house, and use vegetables and herbs grown in his organic garden. You have the option of choosing from several menus, including Thai, Northern Thai, Vegetarian, Street food, Seafood, and Royal Thai. We chose Northern Thai. Pickup, drop off, and a street market tour are all included in the course.

The morning began with a visit to Ruam Chok market, located in the northeastern part of the city. Most of Thailand's produce is grown in the northern region, so this was about as fresh as it could get without picking the crops yourself! We meandered through the market, lane by lane, as Arm gestured to produce I didn't know existed - like Thai eggplant, galanga, and the very spiky bitter melon. Having been to many markets by now, my favorite thing to do is observe the female chefs and vendors. They undertake the most seemingly unglamorous tasks - pounding meat, slicing vegetables, inspecting produce - with such poise, never forgetting their tube of lipstick and fashionable skirt.

We headed back to Arm's house and cooking studio, donning our slippers and aprons.

Our first set of dishes on the docket: Hor Nung Moo, Yum Hed Fang (mushroom soup), and Larb Muang Moo (pork larb)

As far as class format, Arm would share a bit about each dish, explain the ingredients and how to the combine them, before letting us try our hand at it. We made all of the curry sauces from scratch, which began with grinding spices by hand with a mortar and pestle!

Grinding the dry ingredients for our curry: lemongrass, galangal, chilies, shallot, coriander, cumin, kaffir lime

Next, we made the coconut milk for the curry sauce. The first squeeze of the coconut pulp is considered coconut cream, the second squeeze, mixed with water, is coconut milk.

Steven making coconut milk!

We were joined by a lovely couple from Paris who were vacationing in Thailand for a couple weeks. We made our own versions of each dish, and when Arm would ask us how the dish was coming along, they would always remark 'needs a little more fish sauce!'

Spices for larb were also ground by hand, containing coriander, clove, star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, fennel, and pepper.

Pork larb eaten with sticky rice, carrot, long and winged bean, thai and bitter eggplant.

Spicy mushroom soup with wood ear, straw, and enoki mushrooms - might have been my favorite dish of the day!

Glass noodles, minced pork, spices, and LOTS of fish sauce wrapped and steamed in banana leaf

Khao Soi: Northern Thailand's signature dish

The main affair of the day was Khao Soi, perhaps the most famous dish in Northern Thailand.

This is a lovable dish - it combines boiled egg noodles, creamy curry paste mixed in coconut milk, topping with fried egg noodle for crunch, spring onion, pickled vegetables, and a slice of lime. Heaven. On. Earth. It weirdly reminded me of the comfort of eating kugel at Rosh Hashanah - must have been the egg noodles :)

Stuffed to the brim with noodles, we enjoyed some fresh fruit and sampled some local Thai spirits.

Wine made from longan (fruit similar to lychee) and whiskey made from fermented rice.

We ended the day with a Thai classic: Mango Sticky Rice

Sticky rice is sautéed with coconut milk and palm sugar, and placed with mango, banana and black bean, all steamed in banana leaf. Pro tip: mix sticky rice together with butterfly pea flowers to turn the rice blue!