During our stay at Bai Lan Bay, we decided to do a cooking class to get a feel for some of our favourite Thai dishes. Nearby to us in Bai Lan Bay village was cooking school and restaurant called the Happy Turtle which was run by Soa & her Swedish husband Nik.
As its still considered "low season", Ant and I were able to have our own private lesson - normally its classes of up to 4 people. We both cooked Pad Thai with seafood, Ant cooked chicken green curry and spring rolls; and (of course) I cooked som tam (spicy papaya salad) and also a coconut banana dessert. I've been obsessed with som tam since I arrived in Thailand, it was one of the first dishes we tried and I've been eating it every day since. Its essentially a spicy thai salad made out of unripened papaya (its white flesh and green skinned before it ripens), carrot, peanuts, lime, dried shrimp, fish sauce and sugar. The main differentiating feature of the various som tam's I've had has been the amount of fresh chilli added…and apparently the more chilli you can take, the more "Thai" you have become in your tastes. During our cooking class, Soa explained that her chills were the small, hot, hot, hot variety but that she would put about 20 in her own som tam that she eats everyday. The thought of 20 chillis was too much for me, so I added 5 and hoped for the best. The som tam was delicious, but I'm glad I didn't add any more chilli! We were crying with heat at the end of the salad, but still enjoying the taste and the experience of having made it ourselves.
Included in our class was a lovely tour of the garden where a lot of the produce that we used during our cooking class was grown. We cooked and feasted from 10am - 2pm and then retreated to our bungalow to cool off in front of the fan before an afternoon swim… The cooking course cost 1000 Baht (about $30AUD) per person, which included up to 3 dishes each and a thai cookbook. I can definitely recommend this as an experience for anyone in the area of Koh Chang who is looking for an authentic Thai flavour to their cooking and for an interesting and fun thing to do on Koh Chang.
The Happy Turtle also run a restaurant and we ate there another night and loved the food. We loved the Penang curry and Nik makes some mean cocktails at his little bar. My fave was the Coco Delight - vanilla ice-cream, sprite, vodka and malibu - kind of like an alcoholic spider. Yum yum!
www.happyturtle.info
