Thai Food

Thai food is just Aroy mark mark (delicious) they have taken the best of south East Asia and the World and somehow come up with this delicious array of foods.

Wow when you eat real Thai food (not the washed out excuse that they sell in Shopping Mall’s in the West) you will never look back.

I was razed on traditional British fare, with the Sunday roast and apple crumble pudding. As a young lad I worked after school for a Chinese family in a green grocers shop. So at the relatively young age of 11 or 12 was introduced to Chinese food. I loved it.

After living in Thailand for a number of years I returned to New Zealand. That Chinese food that I used to love tasted so bland. Traditional British food just loads on the weight and doesn’t taste much better.

A Thai cook crushes all the herbs and spices in a mortar and pestle (Never in a blender). Spending 20 minutes or so to get it just right. That’s before even starting to cook.

We have Thai cooking course’s that take you to the markets and show you what foods (ingredients) to buy, then take you to our cooking school and teach you how to make Aroy Mark Mark food.

The Thai open markets are an adventure on there own, In Chiang Mai the food comes in fresh every day, literally thousands of trucks and people work all night transporting fresh produce into Chiang Mai from all over the north. Live fish is trucked in ever day in large stainless steel tankers from fish farms and the fishing fleets in the south.

When you buy fish it is pulled out of the water for you, now that’s fresh.

Northern Thailand's cooler climate is conducive to vegetable cultivation; aahaan neua (Northern Thai cuisine) features a larger variety of vegetables than other Thai regional cuisines. Popular here is somtarm, a tart and spicy salad made with green papaya. I would not recommend eating this one unless you are used to Spicy (Real Hot) food.

The cheo neua make use of many roots and herbs seldom seen elsewhere in the country, especially culinary herbs with a bitter flavour. For example, spicy kaeng khae soup contains cha-om (bitter acacia leaf) along with phak chi farang (sawtooth coriander), plus two types of eggplant known for their bitterness, makheua praw (Thai eggplant) and makheua phuang (pea eggplant). Sour tones are enjoyed in other soups, such as kaeng phak heuat (soup with tamarind juice) and kaeng ho (soup with pickled bamboo shoots).

Our cooking course start at one day, were you learn three dishes after your trip to the open market. You learn while having fun, our teachers are skilled cooks but being Thai will always throw some humour into the learning process.

We have people coming back year after year just for the cooking courses.

Chiang Mai also supports the best Traditional Thai massage schools and courses in the country.

Grant Wills
This-is-ChiangMai.com