Learning to Cook Thai Food: Chili in the Eye

This is me happily cooking. I love cooking classes – but I am a horrid cook. I do everything wrong and have no natural cooking instincts. Smiling away… before I learned the dangers of cooking Thai Food. 

When my friend and I signed up for a 1 day cooking class. We loved our class so here is their contact info:

The day started out well. We showed up – our class of 12 consisted of a group of 9 Male from UK, 1 Male from France, and us, the 2 Canadian girls. Entering into a cooking school – I was not expecting to find 10 Boys in our class. But that made the class much more fun – Turns out, all the boys were as bad at cooking and I was. EXCELLENT. But I still snagged that title of “World Cook Ever”. It’s mine and I will NEVER give it up!

To start the class – we had to decide what we actually wanted to cook! I LOVE options! Especially with my non-red meat status. Options included (pictures from BaanThai Website):

My Choices: Stir-fried Prawn, Hot&Sour Prawn, Spring Rolls, Green Curry Pasta, Green Curry w Chicken, & Mange w Sticky Rice!

So all got up, put on our aprons, and stood at our stations at the table. Ready to Cook. Things were going smoothly for me, I got through the first two courses with flying colours; I did not screw up once. It is the curry pasta that ruined things for me. They allowed us to stir the curry powder. This is apparently TOO difficult for me to handle.

So I am sitting, stirring away. With my left hand covering the top to make sure nothing shoots up and hits me in the eye. Too bad my left hand did not prevent this – Curry Paste IN THE EYE.

This is by FAR the worst experience one can ever have. I immediately screamed as pain shot through my eye and jumped up knowing I could not RUB my eye due to BOTH hands have more of the Toxic-ever-hates-me-curry-paste! The teacher led me to the sink and helped me rinse my eyes out. At this time my tears had turned to laughter as I realized that Only my cooking skills (definite lack there of) would lead to such a debacle!  After about 10 minutes of rinses I felt comfortable looking in the mirror, and the Giant-Red-Eyed monster starring back at me made me laugh harder.

I returned to the table to attempt to enjoy cooking. I picked up the knife to do some dicing and put my hand on top of the knife to steady it. What I DIDN’T do? Make sure the knife was not UPSIDE-DOWN in my hand. Yes, that is right, I was holding the knife upside-down and was pushing my other hand INTO the BLADE. Luckily I was moving slowly and only got a prick instead of a terrible gash. I may be dumb – but at least its a moderate dumbness that prevents PERMANENT damage.

There were no incidents after this. I enjoyed my Mango&Sticky Rice and went home for the evening. Smiling.

I will ALWAYS remember this Thai Cooking class….Always.

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