BKK2018 | Cooking Thai

Photo by Your City Promdi

Bangkok is the city that taught me how to like spicy food. In fact, the food here is so good, you can do nothing but eat in Bangkok and call it an excellent travel experience. The food is an explosion of flavors--both strong and mild--blended perfectly.

Capturing the cuisine

Their vegetables are often crisp and cooked very lightly. Their soups can be light and comforting or creamy and heavy and perfect to pair with jasmine rice. The seafood here is gorgeous--shrimp and squid, clams and mussels, high-quality fish--and cooked almost always perfectly, in whatever way they are prepared. Perhaps that's even the reason why I love the food in Bangkok so much, the fresh seafood is just to die for. Then of course, there is the dessert--mango sticky rice is good, their milk tea is refreshing, and their selection of fruit drinks are some of the best that the tropical weather can offer.

Tom yong goong, hotel style. (Photo by Your City Promdi)

The price points of food here in Bangkok does not even matter. Hotels and high-end restaurants will have wonderfully plated, sometimes-fusion, offerings. A traveler can try those and be satisfied.

But Bangkok's street food is where the city can truly be tasted. Street food is a perfectly acceptable communal way to dine. It is normal to see simple homes opening up to a few tables where anyone--expats and locals alike--can be seen enjoying local cuisine together. I've had one memorable trip where I walked more than I expected, and was so thankful that at the end of it, I found a fried chicken stall. It was glorious. On many working days, street food vendors get quite busy with lunch goers in their suits and skirts enjoying a quick, light meal of noodles with veggies and fishballs, or tom yum, or pad thai, or rice topped with a viand. Snack offerings are quite healthy, with guava, mangoes, melon, pineapples and watermelon available most of the year.

Firing up the wok

Photo by Your City Promdi

On my recent trip to Bangkok, food was a definite high point. On my very first night, despite vowing not to be cliche, I ordered a bowl of tom yum goong (Thai shrimp soursoup). What can I say? It's comforting, sinigang-like but with a spicy kick. It's the perfect way to cap off a long day of traveling.

On the very next evening, I went with my work mates to a Thai cooking class. There are options for whole-day classes that includes going to the market and learning to buy the ingredients, but we only opted for a three-hour class that went straight to cooking.

We went to a place called Bangkok Thai Cooking Academy. Housed in a nondescript building, it welcomed us into an open-floor layout, two-thirds of which had tables full of cooking ingredients and the back third had cooking stations. Our instructor was a cheery Thai lady whose English is all the better for her humor.

We cooked dishes: tom yum goong, pad thai, fresh spring rolls, and mango sticky rice. Check out some photos from the class.

Raw ingredients. (Photo by Your City Promdi)

Just a few minutes before firing up the wok! (Photo by Your City Promdi)

Our very own Thai food (Photo by Your City Promdi)