Our family experience: Happy Thanksgiving Thai cooking class
Chiang Mai cooking classes can help a family like ours deal with a wee dilemma: Away from the USA over Thanksgiving with no oven and no turkey?
We were in Thailand during Thanksgiving… what would we do?
That was definitely going to be different. No dressing, Jodie’s favorite, full of bready goodness and savory sausage and herbaceous vegetables. No roasted sweet potatoes, sweet and creamy. We wouldn’t even make Anthony’s signature beer cheese dip, which a set of friends in Oregon has joked is the only reason they invite us for dinner.
No, this Thanksgiving was going to be unlike anything we have ever had before. But it would have the most important elements: A good meal. And each other.
For us Thanksgiving is typically full of cooking and togetherness. Some years we’ve dined with friends in Eugene, or sometimes family in other parts of the country. Other years we’ve made our own meal at home, and shared with neighbors. But not this year. This year we would have no traditional Thanksgiving.
We were still in Thailand though, a country that reveres food. And even if we weren’t with some of the other people we love, the four of us were together, in the same place, on a day we consider one of our favorite of the year.
On Thanksgiving, we’d take a Thai cooking class
So in Chiang Mai, Thailand, we decided that if we couldn’t make Thanksgiving dinner, we would instead take a 5-course cooking class. After all, we’re used to cooking on Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t be turkey and trimmings, but it didn’t need to be. It would still be a meal, made from scratch, together, that our family could enjoy.
On Thanksgiving afternoon, Apple from Cookventure picked us up. Prior to founding Cookventure, she had also worked as a teacher at the same place where, years prior, I had once taken a Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai.
Now, Apple wandered with us through the Ming Muang Market. Old timbers held up a high corrugated metal roof, the last market of its kind in the city. Herbs and aromatics for soups weren’t just available, they were bundled by the type of soup you wanted to make. Eggplants came in dozens of varieties, some long and slender, almost more like summer squash or zucchini, but with pale purple-pink skins. Others were the size of blueberries and came in green bunches like grapes.
The kids wrinkled their noses as they smelled fish sauce, oyster sauce, chiles, garlic, and lemongrass. At another stall, we cracked coconuts together, and watched the meat get ground up, then bagged for us to use later.
Five courses of family cooking
After the market, Apple drove us through the streets of Chiang Mai. On a cloudy day that teased rain but never gave a drop, we stopped on a narrow street lined with houses, in a quiet residential neighborhood. Bushy green plants along the street sprouted large flowers, some pink, some yellow, some white. In an empty lot, banana trees rose.
And we started prepping ingredients for the first of five courses.
“The thinner you slice the chile,” said Apple, “the hotter it will be in the final dish.”
“Daddy will slice his an atom thick!” said Connor.
From pad thai to chicken stir-fried with cashews, we soon had finished our first courses. Aster chopped up fillets of white fish, to be roughly chopped into the base for fried fish cakes that she had chosen. We crushed aromatics and simmered lemongrass and galangal in coconut milk, for savory seafood soups.
At the table, we tucked into our soups. Aster even tried some enoki mushrooms and cooked tomatoes. Though when it came to the chile jam, sweet and translucent brown, with a deep, funky heat, Aster politely waved it away.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I joked, and winked at her.
Connor replied, “That’s exactly how I would describe you.”
Pounding our own curry paste
On a low bench, Apple and her assistant had set up slender, heavy, stone mortars. Each could easily hold a quart or a liter, and inside each was a heavy stone pestle about the size of my forearm.
We all sat before a mortar like a potter before their wheel. Apple came by to each of us, dropping in chiles, or garlic, or dried shrimp, or lemongrass. And we pounded. Scraped. Lifted and dropped. I don’t know how long we worked the mortars and pestles, but pound by pound, minute by minute, the whole ingredients surrendered their shape and form to become something new, powerful, and fragrant. Curry pastes. Jodie made a green, with rich color from small, slender green chiles. My panang was a sunset red, gleaming from the red, long, dried chiles that I pounded. The kids made yellow curries, a little tamer, but no less fragrant.
“I still see chile pieces,” Apple told me at one point. “Keep pounding!”
After the pounding, the mixing. Apple brought out the ground coconut we’d gotten at the market earlier, from the coconuts we had cracked with a few poundings from our own fists. After mixing the coconut with water in a large bowl, the kids began to knead and squeeze the mixture, until gradually what was clear became milky, then a rich white.
On the stove, the rough beauty of the curry pastes combined with the fresh, sweet coconut milk. And that alchemy, that brilliant soul and chemistry of Thai food, showed us all the power of its everyday magic.
We enjoyed bite after bite, of our curries with rice, but also of our desserts—mango and sticky rice, with a sweet coconut milk sauce, and deep-fried bananas.
I spent the evening mostly grinning. Taking my own cooking class in Chiang Mai nearly twenty years ago had been one of the most memorable experiences of my life, and had done much to shape my love of Thai food. Now, I was not only back in Chiang Mai. I was sharing a cooking class, enjoying homemade, from-scratch Thai food, with my three favorite people, on one of our favorite days of the year.
Thankful in Thailand
On Thanksgiving, a day where gratitude is the most important ingredient of all, I knew exactly what I was thankful for. But Connor beat me to it.
“I’m thankful,” said my son, “for the people I’m with.”
Was it a Thanksgiving completely different from any we’ve ever had? You bet. And I’m sure it won’t be the last that is different either. But whether it’s the same or different, roast turkey or Thai curry, doesn’t matter. The spirit of Thanksgiving is the love we share, and what, and who, we are grateful for. It’s embracing the challenges of the day—after all, it is a lot of cooking—but also the joys.
We embraced both. And each other. Then we took that day of Chiang Mai cooking classes into our hearts, our Thai Thanksgiving, different, and delicious. Beautiful—and above all, ours.
Where to stay in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Take the same Chiang Mai cooking class we took
Check out Chiang Mai cooking classes
