My friend D called me last night to say that something had come up, would I like to take her place in a Thai cooking class? Well of course I said yes! I love Thai food. So this morning I got up early and hauled myself over to the class. Me and seven other women were there to learn how to prepare these delicious Thai dishes. A pair of us were assigned to each of the recipes and this is what I made.

Yes I know that this does not look like much, but, it is red chili paste, the basis for many different recipes. The hard bit is having all these weird ingredients on hand (galangal, lemon grass, shallots, chilis, etc.). I chopped thing up and then whizzed it into a paste with a hand blender (my partner had toasted and ground the spices).

This was being made by another group, and was for a pork and noodle salad (much tastier than it sounds).

This was shrimp and pineapple fried rice, served in a pineapple bowl. It’s a lovely presentation, but I am not the sort of cook who fusses much with the appearance. If food is good it quickly vanishes.

Here’s our tasting plates: shrimp and pineapple fried rice, laab woonsen (pork and noodle salad), tom kha gai (coconut chicken soup). And all of these were quite delicious.

This was the one I worked on, beef Massaman curry. It has thinly sliced beef, white sweet potato and onion, cooked in coconut and beef broth with the delicious red chili paste and other spices. It’s served with toasted peanuts, cilantro and chopped up hot chili. Although I had carefully chopped up the chili per the recipe, neither me nor any of the other diners added this to their curry.

There really wasn’t anything difficult about these recipes, other than they were multi-stage preparations with weird ingredients. So I think that I could make this again, after a trip across town to the local Asian market. I probably shall do this, someday, perhaps.