50/50: i.love.thai.cooking

have you heard of Groupon? that daily internet deal you can get if enough people buy...well, my coworker introduced it to me and every day as i get into work i check my email and see what's the latest deal.

so far i have bought two (got a haircut at organic mode salon downtown seattle which included eyebrow wax, hand massage, head massage and haircut and a culinary class at cook's world. i took "thai oodles of noodles." both very good experiences.

i was kinda nervous for the thai cooking class because i am not the best cook and actually prefer not to be in the kitchen to actually cook, but for more like using the space to spray walnut ink on my tags and such, lol!

our chef was Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen and she was fantastic. honestly, it felt it a little chaotic, but i am the good note taker and paid attention writing side notes that weren't included in the handout recipes. the strange thing for me is we had our 4 recipes we were going to make, but each time we made the dish it wasn't exactly the same steps as the recipes.

we made the following:

Tom Yum Haeng Sen Lek ( a sweet and sour soup - rice vermicelli with shrimp in roasted red chili and lime dressing)

Kao Soy (egg noodles in Chiang Mai chicken curry sauce)

Yam Woon Sen (cellophane noodle salad with minced pork and fresh thai herbs)

Phad Thai (a classic thai dish- chantaboon rice noodles stir fried in phad thai sauce with chicken)

there was 15 people in my class and groups of 4 would go up and assist Pranee with each recipe and after each dish we would eat. ok, that part was so much fun! each dish was amazingly good and i had a night full of smiles.

i left thinking i could attempt the first 3, but the phad thai might be too intensive for me. i told my coworker about it and she was really pushing me to cook all four so i wouldn't forget what i learned in class. feeling pumped up, christopher and i headed to Viet Wah thursday night and bought most of the ingredients for the four dishes and i came home and went into cooking mode.

just like in class, i made my garlic oil--check, fried my shallots golden and crispy--check, and prepared the phad thai sauce --check! omgosh i was so happy!

friday, i asked christopher for a low budget friday night in-house (we tend to go out every friday) so we stayed home and made phad thai and when we were done and sampled our handywork, we were like "omg this phad thai rocks!"

christopher said it was even tastier than our favorite thai spot--Thai Siam in ballard! the secret is in the phad thai sauce recipe Pranee gave us.

thank you so much Pranee for making me a happy little cooking camper!