Woks Up!

We’d all decided we wanted to do a cooking class while Ma was here and looked into several before choosing the one at Le Meridien which is conveniently next door to us, ever lazy as I am 🙂 It was on a par price wise with all the others and it was also the only one I found where we could choose each course we wanted to cook. The other courses we looked at had different recipes each day but we didn’t like all the recipes on any given day and I am, swell up throat stop breathing, allergic to chilli. I know people seem to think that every dish has to be drenched in it over here but i’ve never found that to be the case and clearly eat well, evidenced by my lovely hips 😜

We arrived at Le Meridien at 12 and were ushered up and down and round eventually into an open sided room on the side of the restaurant in front of the kitchen. The hoped for air conditioning, or even a fan, was not present and within minutes I was drenched but you will not hear me conplaining about the heat for at least another six months, hot and drenched is better than frozen. They’d provided large glasses of ice water and gorgeous aprons in traditional Thai fabric which we got to keep (thank goodness Ma is here but no idea how her case will fit all of this 😳).

We cooked the courses out of order of serving and Ma was first up with the Tom Kha Gai, chicken coconut cream soup. She expertly added, stirred, seasoned and tasted. It was so much easier than I would have thought to cook something so flavoursome but really not my favourite. I love pretty much every part of a coconut but I think the soups are a little cloying and perfumey.

Next was me with Phad Thai Goong Sod, wok fried rice noodle with prawn and tamarind sauce and let me say it was BLOOMING DELICIOUS. The prawns were massive! Never would I have put the eggs in the wok first but now I will always and the tamarind sauce was fandabbydozey. The slight disappointment with this course was that it was cooked and delicious but set aside until after the starter was cooked and eaten and once reheated had lost a smidgen of it’s awesomeness. Eaten fresh I think it would have been outstanding.

JHubz cooked our starter last and it really was the show stopper, soft shell crab salad. I’ve only ever had soft shell crab in sushi and the other two not at all, so we were all a bit apprehensive that we would have to kill it, which thankfully we did not, phew! They were washed and prepared for us along with the other ingredients. The crabs were covered in seasoned flour and gently slid into a very hot pan of oil where a few minutes of miracle cooking transformed 3 small grey floppy crabs into 3 large puffed out golden crispy orange marvels. The salad base of julienned green mango, cashew nuts, spring onions and shallots was gently mixed in a deceptively simple dressing of fish sauce and lime juice before being portioned out. The crispy crab sat atop it and then a crown of finely shredded carrot, tomato, shallot, celery and cabbage added. It was totally gorgeous and delicious.

Our Chef had a great sense of humour. We laughed and cooked and got to eat delicious food, all in all a lovely experience and one I would really recommend to the foodies amongst you Xx