Cooking Class in Chiang Mai - Thailand

I was recently in Thailand for my honeymoon and when we went to Chiang Mai we decided to do a cooking class to learn how to cook Thai food.
Many places have these types of cooking classes for tourist when you travel. Sometimes it's just about how luck you get when you get to the place to see if there's time and room for you to take a lesson.

We were lucky that there were many classes to pick from in Chiang Mai so we found one that was able to work into our schedule.
We joined a one day course at the Thai Kitchen Centre.
The course included a market tour in the morning where they take you to the market and introduce you to the different ingredients.
And then after the market tour you go back to the kitchen and start cooking your 4 courses.
We got to make an appetizer, a soup, a curry paste that you will use in a curry, a stir fry dish and a dessert.


If you go in a group, you don't have to all pick the same dishes, you pick the dishes you want to learn and they will split you up into groups to go to different stations and learn the different dish.
Between me and my husband, we made 8 different dishes that day and we shared the food with other people at our table so we got to sample all the dishes they were teaching during the course.
My husband made:

Glass Noodles Salad (left)

Thai Herb Soup (right)

Pad Thai

Green Curry Paste for the Curry (Below)

And for dessert - Black Sticky Rice Pudding.

I made

Chicken Satay (left)

Chicken in Coconut Milk Soup

Red Curry Paste for my Red Curry with Chicken (right top bowl)

Chicken with Basil Leaves (right bottom dish)

And for dessert - Sticky Rice with Mango.

We had a lot of fun, I really appreciate the cookbook as I don't remember much anymore. It's a pity that some of the recipes we learned that day isn't exactly the same as the cookbook. sometimes the instructor will teach you their style so you can compare it with the book. I'm still trying to hunt down the sauce for the spring rolls they taught in class because it's different from the one in the book and it was amazing.

One challenge I'll definitely have is finding the ingredients here in Canada to make all the food. I can find most of it, but some of it just isn't the same. So I'll be doing some experiments at home as soon as we are not sick of curry anymore and we get a pastel and mortar so we can make the curry paste.

I'll post as soon as we're successful :)

Cheers

 (PS this is a Butterfly Pea drink. I didn't really taste much flavour, it was a bit sweet, but it was very cool to see it change colors from blue to purple wen you add in lime juice!)

Rustic Fall Theme Wedding Cake and Decorations

I'm so excited I finally got my wedding pictures from my photographer.
I had a fall wedding this year and did my own wedding cake.
The reception was at the Hart House at the University of Toronto.
It has a nice rustic setting and it's simple and elegant.
I wanted to do something to match the place and the fact that it was the fall.
So all my decorations for the wedding and the cake just ended up as a fall theme wedding.

I baked a 3 tier cake for my wedding. The top 6in is a dark chocolate cake with pistachio buttercream.
The 9in layer is a white chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream.
The bottom 12in layer is a vanilla cake with a mango and citrus buttercream.

Covered by fondant. The brown ribbon is also fondant.
Used leaves and a branch with pumpkin as decorations.
I used fishing wires to hold the leaves onto the cake.


This is the center pieces on the long tables we had. The color leaves we used in an effort to match the cake. All fall colors. We scattered small acorns and pumpkin along the long table since it's so long.

Along with some candles as well ;)

I weaved all the baskets myself. Rolled newspaper, white glued the rolls into tubes and used them to weave. After the spray paint job you can't even tell it was newspaper!


The headtable had garlands of fall color leaves for simplicity sake.

And our table seating was pretty much harvest color as well.

:) I'm so glad everything turned out so well. Had such a great time and I'm glad our guests did too.

For our cookie wedding favour, Click Here.

Fuzzy Melon and Chicken

Fuzzy melons are awesome in taste and texture.
It also absorbs flavour so when you cook it with meats, it becomes very flavourful.

This is a very simple dish. The melon takes time to soften when cooking but length of time depends how soft you like the melons.
The melons are cooked as soon as it's translucent.
I personally like them a bit softer so I cook it a bit longer.

This is the base recipe for you to scale if you need to cook more.

Fuzzy Melon and Chicken

Makes 1 Plate Prep Time: 20 mins Cook Time: 10-20 mins

Ingredients

• 1 small fuzzy melon (just 1 of the melons in the picture on the left)
• 200g chicken
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• ~3/4 cup of water, use as necessary
• Optional handful of "Bean Thread Noodle", usually the bag says rice noodle but it's not vermicelli. Chinese character for it is 粉絲 and it's very different from vermicelli which is 米粉

Directions

1. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and add in the soy sauce and and sugar and mix.
2. Use the blunt side of a small knife to scrape off the skin of the melon.
3. Rinse the melon and cut into strips (refer to picture on the left). Cooking time will depend on how big you cut the melon.
4. Add a bit of oil to a heated pot and add the garlic.
5. Cook the chicken until 70% and then scoop out the chicken into the bowl or plate you will be serving with. Leave behind any liquid left from cooking the chicken. This will be flavour for the melon.
6. Add the melon into the pot. Add a little bit of water and cover the pot to cook.
7. Stir every so often and add more water as necessary to make sure you do not burn the pot or melon.
8. Cook the melon until it's translucent. Can take anywhere from 10-20 minutes depending on how big you cut the pieces and how much water you're using.
9. If you are cooking noodles, add the noodles when the melons are translucent. Add more water if necessary, really depends on what type of noodles you're using.
10. Add the Meat as well to finish cooking. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes.

Done :)

Note: If you don't have 粉絲 on hand, you can always use potato starch noodle as well.

Match (Green Tea) Honey Spritz Cookie

 Originally we were going to give 2 bottles of wine per person for wedding favours. One day my hubby had and idea and asked why don't we do cookies and wine. I wasn't too thrill with the idea since we already have all the wine but I figured we can drink it ourselves if we want to.
So I decided to make green tea heart shape cookies since it's a recipe I've done before.

The nice thing about these cookies is that it's freezable so you can make them well ahead of time. The most I've tried freezing these cookies before eating them is 1 month. Since I know 1 month will work great, that's how far ahead I made the cookies.

I saran wrapped pairs of cookies so I can easily put them into the favour bags the day before the wedding.
I got these pretty favour bags on the left from China.

I found filling the gun to be very time consuming. Even more time consuming then it is to make the cookies and squeeze out each cookie. Since I had to make 200 cookies, I had 2 cookie guns going. I would fill while my hubby would squeeze it out.

The heart shape from the Wilson cookie gun isn't as good as you can see from the picture on the left.
It looks a bit weird but the cookie gun is easy to use.

I borrowed the second cookie gun from my friend.
Her's is an Italian brand cookie gun. It's harder to use but the heart shapes turn out a lot better as seen in the picture on the right.

Overall, the product taste good so I cared less about the shape.

Match Honey Spritz Cookie

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp matcha
• 180g non bleach all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 113.5g butter
• 50g sugar
• 1 egg
• 50g honey
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F.
2. In a bowl, mix together the matcha, flour, baking powder and salt. 
3. In another bowl, cream the butter until fluffy using a stand mixer or a hand mixer. 
4. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla to the butter and beat until evenly mixed and fluffy.
5. Add the dry mixture to the ingredients and mix until the dry ingredients is just incorporated. The dough should look shaggy and somewhat fluffy.
6. Check if the dough is too wet, if it is, add more flour.
7. Load the dough into the cookie gun and press the dough onto a cold, ungreased cookie sheet.
8. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until the cookies are lightly golden brown around the edges. Remove from heat and onto cooling grid.

Enjoy :)

Birthday Cupcakes Oct 2014 - Strawberry Buttercream and Lemon Buttercream

It's been a while since I posted since I was crazy busy with moving and the wedding. But I finally did something I want to post about (besides my wedding cake, I'll do that when I get the official pictures)

This year we celebrated 4 birthdays at the same time as Thanksgiving. My husband, brother, niece and nephew are all born in October.
So what sort of cake do I make to celebrate 4 birthdays?
This year I went with cupcakes! Multiple for everyone.

Actually I was super excited this year to try out a new buttercream recipe.
I recently experimented with Swiss Buttercream and found out just how big of a difference methods contributes to the final product!
I used the exact same egg white:butter:sugar ratio as I normally do for my Italian Meringue Buttercream (minus the water because I don't need it anymore) and it was amazing!
It was every fluffier then normal!
I was so happy. This is now my new go to method.

Ratio-wise I'm still playing with it to see if I can decrease the butter and sugar a bit more to see if it'll get even fluffier.
I'll eventually settle on something I really like.
I also need to check if making my own butter helped too. That was also quite easy. Machine did all the work :)

Until then, here is the method I'm now using.

1. Mix sugar into the egg whites and whip over a double boiler set up.
2. Keep hand mixing until whites are 160 degrees F
3. Once it's at 160 degrees, remove from heat and mix in stand mixer Thick, glossy and cool. Can take up to 10 mins.**
4. Add in the whipped butter and mix until smooth. (if the butter is not pre-whipped, you can add it in little chunks at a time. I find with my stand mixer and pre-whipped butter I can drop in the entire thing)
5. Flavour accordingly

**Whipping time depends on the mixing stand you use!! I have a Bosch Universal Plus and it only takes about 3-5 mins to whip up on speed 4! I talked to the ladies at healthykitchens and they said with older Bosch machines you should use speed 3 and it takes about the same amount of time.
My friend uses a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer and it takes her about 10 mins. So please watch while it whips. I've tried whipping it for 10 mins before and nothing really changed too much, maybe a little less fluffy but at least it didn't collapse.

This time I made Strawberry and Lemon butter cream :) both were a hit.
I added a small fondant star for decoration on them just for cute factor

Have fun experimenting!

Pesto Chicken Beer Crust Pizza

At my parent's house we cook Chinese food every weekday. Since we have all the Chinese seasoning on hand, cooking Chinese food is the easy way out. On weekends my brother and I like to mix things up sometimes if we're not feeling lazy. Pizza surprisingly can be quite labour intensive depending on what type of ingredients you use.

If you use things like pepperoni, already cooked meats, pre-sliced veggie and shredded cheese, then it's super easy.

For this Pizza, I used homemade beer crust dough and Pesto sauce.

I'll eventually write separate posts for those items.

Pesto Chicken Beer Crust Pizza

Makes 1-12 inch pizza, Prep Time: 30 mins Cook Time: 20 - 40 mins

Ingredients

• 300-500g Pizza Dough (Depends on crust thickness and size of pan)
• 1 Chicken thigh meat (sliced and cooked)
• half an onion sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 Tbsp Pesto Sauce (a little more doesn't hurt)
• 200g Mozzarella

Directions

1. If you're making your own pizza dough, make it and let it sit for 30 mins while you prep the rest of your ingredients.
2. While the dough is sitting, slice up the onions and dice up the garlic. Cook in a little bit of oil in a pan on medium heat to slowly caramelize the onion. Doesn't have to be fully caramelize when you use it for this pizza.
3. Cut the chicken meat into small bite size piece. Add to the pan and cook the meat
4. Let your toppings cool
5. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (or to the max heat your pan allows, I like 400 as it makes my crust nice and crunchy)
6. Grate your mozzarella
7. Roll our your pizza to your prefer thickness. The one in the picture above was cracker like because I like my super thin crust pizza.
8. Spread the pesto on the dough. Since this is pesto, cover even the the edges, your crust will taste awesome.
9. Spread a thin layer of cheese
10. Add the chicken, onion and garlic topping.
11. Add the rest of the cheese
12. Bake until the crust is brown and the cheese is all melted. Depending on thickness of your dough, can take anywhere from 20 mins to 45 hour. So keep an eye on it.

Not too complicated. :)

Maple Miso Spare Ribs

These ribs are one of my favourites to make.
I love Maple Syrup. Ever since I got real maple syrup and tried cooking with it, I've been addicted to cooking with it. It's so good. I love it for my pancakes, but cooking with it adds a nice depth to your food.

This is definitely a fusion type dish since maple syrup is mainly from North America :)

Maple Miso Spare Ribs

Makes: 1 Plate Prep Time: 15 mins Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients

• 1 lbs spare ribs (cut per rib)
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1 heaping tsp Miso
• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• mirin or other type of rice wine to deglaze (optional)
• 1 to 2 tbsp maple syrup

Directions

1. Wash your spare ribs to help get rid of chipped bones and then cut them per rib.
2. Marinate it with the soy sauce, sugar and corn starch for a minimum of 10 mins. The longer the more flavour your meat will have.
3. Mince your garlic
4. Heat your pan. Once it's hot, add oil and add the garlic and miso. Quickly stir.
5. Add the spare ribs and mix well. Keep stirring so your meat doesn't burn.
6. Add a little bit of water and cover to cook.
7. Check and stir your ribs every several minutes. Add more water if required, don't have to add too much, just a little to help the miso dissolve and to keep meat from sticking to pan.
8. Once your meat is ready, add a splash of mirin to deglaze the pan. Stir things around.
9. Turn off heat and add the maple syrup. I like to have all my ribs coated with maple syrup.

And you're done :)

Miso: It doesn't matter what type of miso you use. I find the taste is relatively the same between yellow and red miso. I don't find much of a difference between Korean and Japanese miso either.

Tip: you do not need a lot of soy sauce in this dish because the soy flavour really comes from the miso itself.
Also the Miso may be salty so do not add too much of both or your dish will be salty.
Balance it out with more sugar.