The Hipcooks classes have continued, with my latest assistantship this past Tuesday night for their Thai Three class. And I keep learning a great deal of information. I was excited to learn more about the flavors and ingredients in Thai cooking, having tried a few Thai dishes at home but without any proper instruction. I can definitely say that everything that was made in class tasted very delicious and pretty darn authentic. I also feel much more comfortable shopping for and using Thai ingredients.
To start the class learned to make shrimp dumplings (great methodology but I will be altering my filling from the classes) and larb, which is a very popular ground meat salad that we served in lettuce wraps with a spicy nam prik sauce. The larb was so delicious, using pork and ground up toasted rice to soak up the juice.
Next we made a panang curry fresh from several ingredients including: garlic, ginger, shrimp paste, galangal, lemongrass, dried chilies, green onion, peanuts, cumin, and other things I cannot remember. For the panang we added beef, bell peppers and of course coconut milk. This came out really thick and delicious. The other entree we learned was a pad see ewe, essentially Thai noodle stirfry with rice noodles, Chinese broccoli, and egg. This one was left vegetarian and I quite enjoyed it that way. A pretty easy dish to make but so much flavor and I love the chew of large rice noodles.
To conclude the meal we made a Thai iced tea mousse. For this we steeped black tea, cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom in cream before chilling that and then whipping the cream into a thick mousse. Very good but I think I took more out of that for ideas on a chai panna cotta or something similar.
All in all I learned so much, ate quite a bit and even took home some for leftovers. I also met the other instructor; a very nice girl, my age, from Midland, MI.
Chelsea
Evolving in the Emerald City 