Cooking today at Pum’s Kitchen in Patong, we were all looking forward to this. The lessons started at Eleven O’clock so we caught the ten O’clock bus  to town allowing time to wander and shop in town. The Market stuff wasn’t really going when we arrived and so we headed off to find a Coffee. Another mission, the days was very hot already, clear sky, bright sun and just damn hot.

Pums Kitchen before we messed it up

Our stop was at a Lazzaone Coffee place and we all ordered an iced coffee. Well that was at about 10:30 by 10:45 we were still waiting. Just as we thought it might have turned up the lady running the place rushed off to buy ice. Oh well with five minutes to go we had to drink our relaxing coffee in a minute of so and fortunately Pums Kitchen is a couple of doors down the road.

Our day in Pum’s Kitchen was to learn to cook Thai Food, well the basics anyway. We had the place booked out, all four of us were to do the course, we were the only students for this class.

Placed at a table on one side with the plates, knives and cutting boards on it, we received our introduction to our teacher for the day Mai a Thai girl with reasonable English. She started by re-arranging our per-organized menus so we could work in pairs in our cooking.

The first hour or so was doing preparation and learning some of the secrets of making this easy. We prepared all the vegetables and herbs for the entire day before starting any actual cooking.
Once preparation is complete its time to man the Woks, or pans as it actually was. Nothing fancy here, a single burner and battered old pots were the main tools.

can now feel confident to cook good Thai food with fresh ingredients. We made simple dishes such as the favorite Thai Soup Tom Yum Goon or any other kind of Tom Yum. Learned a little on building bowls out of food as containers, and other methods of food art, Between us we prepared, cooked and ate 20 Thai dishes. One of the most useful things to learn was making our own fresh curry paste. This is so simple and the effect is fantastic. The course took six hours, after the course we went to the food markets with our Mai, its much more fun when you do this with a local.

We have eaten nothing but Thai food, and now we have done the course we are rating the restaurants. Best Tom Yum, best Green Curry, adding a some fun to the meals.