No, no! Not THAT kind of poo. This is about cooking with Khun Poo, an amazingly energetic Thai woman who has lifted herself, her family, and several friends out of poverty by founding and running a cooking school.
One of the most popular Things To Do while visiting Thailand is taking a cooking class, because Thai food is to die for. All kinds of places cater to this tourist obsession, but the one we kept hearing about was Cooking with Poo. She founded her school with the help of a charitable group called Helping Hands, which has many supporters in our expat neighborhood, and she's been able to support her family and help others in the Klong Toey slum, where she lives. She's been remarkably successful. She recently traveled to the UK to appear with Jamie Oliver, and she and her assistant, Khun Noi, couldn't stop talking about it! She's an incredibly energetic, happy person.
One of the ladies in my neighborhood was dying to cook with Poo, so she scheduled a Saturday morning class and rounded some of us up to join her. It was so fun!
The class started with a tour of the gigantic market in the Klong Toey area of Bangkok, where Khun Poo and Khun Noi bought supplies for our menu.
We're not in Kansas, you know. Not even in (vegetarian) India.
I can handle the plucked chickens with eyes still staring ...
... snakes and eels are a little weirder ...
... but the skinned frogs were a bit much.
How about some bugs? So good for you! Khun Poo pointed out which taste good and which taste as nasty as they look ... I do not plan to test her theories.
Klong is the Thai word for canal, so the Klong Toey area is the part of town along the Toey canal. This is looking across the canal to another part of the market.
Some stalls specialize in providing vast quantities of one item, and others sell everything you need for your meal in small piles.
These red bulbs are banana flowers.
I haven't been able to figure out what all the greens are around here. They have lemon grass, several kinds of kale and cabbage, morning glory, long beans, several kinds of basil, cilantro/coriander, celery greens, and on and on and on.
You can't cook Thai food without chilies!
The green bulbs are Thai eggplant ...
This stall was full of dried seafood, and the smell about knocked me out ...
Fruit! The red, fuzzy ones are rambutan. Delicious!
I've never seen so many kinds of eggs for sale as we see here in Thailand. All colors and sizes and from all kinds of birds.
More fruit, including limes, bananas, longan ...
Rambutan, mangosteen, and longan ...
These women were making wrappers for spring rolls. They grabbed a handful of dough, swirled it into a very thin, round pancake, flipped it, and stacked it with other freshly made wrappers. It took about 15 seconds to complete each one.
Snacks and sweets stall ...
This is a set-up for steaming sticky rice ... mmmm ... sticky rice ...
Chinese Thais use pig heads and parts for good luck offerings ...
Thai food is heavy on seafood. We saw thousands of crabs, shrimp, squid, and fish ...
A couple of years ago, the community raised the money to cover the market's largest meat section ...
... where we saw lots of families working together.
We were at the market from around 8:30 in the morning, and it was crowded and busy. The streets were packed, and every once in a while you'd hear one of these porters yelling for people to make way.
Veggie stand. The wrapped things are cauliflower.
After we finished at the market, we were off to cook what we'd bought. Khun Poo's nice kitchen burned down a couple of months ago, and while they were rebuilding, she held her classes at her sister's house in the slum. Here's a view of part of our walk. John and his mom, Sarah, did a Cooking with Poo class a couple of weeks ago and were able to cook in the new kitchen, but I enjoyed getting a look at a part of Bangkok I normally wouldn't see.
Two of my neighbors, Thuy and Mindy, making lemon grass salad.
Here's mine. Delicious!
Thuy about to dig in to her pad thai, which was the second dish we made.
Our last dish was massaman curry. We made the curry paste from scratch, toasting the whole spices and then pulverizing them with a mortar and pestle. We also toasted fresh ingredients like lemon grass, galangal, and garlic, and then pounded those together with the dry spices. If I did this every day I'd be ripped. Take a look at Khun Poo's lower arm muscles. Impressive, eh? You should see her biceps!
Here I am taking my punishment, er ... turn. I'm pleased to inform you that I finally went and had my hair dyed, so I don't look quite so scary now.
The finished product. This was by far the best massaman curry I've ever eaten ...
Here's the group from my neighborhood with Khun Poo and Khun Noi (not a flattering shot of her, sadly). Thuy, Mindy, Kerry, Debby, and me.
I highly recommend Cooking with Poo! It was great fun, Khun Poo and Khun Noi are great people, and it was a great opportunity to see Bangkok in an up-close-and-personal kind of way.
One of the most popular Things To Do while visiting Thailand is taking a cooking class, because Thai food is to die for. All kinds of places cater to this tourist obsession, but the one we kept hearing about was Cooking with Poo. She founded her school with the help of a charitable group called Helping Hands, which has many supporters in our expat neighborhood, and she's been able to support her family and help others in the Klong Toey slum, where she lives. She's been remarkably successful. She recently traveled to the UK to appear with Jamie Oliver, and she and her assistant, Khun Noi, couldn't stop talking about it! She's an incredibly energetic, happy person.
One of the ladies in my neighborhood was dying to cook with Poo, so she scheduled a Saturday morning class and rounded some of us up to join her. It was so fun!
The class started with a tour of the gigantic market in the Klong Toey area of Bangkok, where Khun Poo and Khun Noi bought supplies for our menu.
We're not in Kansas, you know. Not even in (vegetarian) India.
I can handle the plucked chickens with eyes still staring ...
... snakes and eels are a little weirder ...
... but the skinned frogs were a bit much.
How about some bugs? So good for you! Khun Poo pointed out which taste good and which taste as nasty as they look ... I do not plan to test her theories.
Klong is the Thai word for canal, so the Klong Toey area is the part of town along the Toey canal. This is looking across the canal to another part of the market.
Some stalls specialize in providing vast quantities of one item, and others sell everything you need for your meal in small piles.
These red bulbs are banana flowers.
I haven't been able to figure out what all the greens are around here. They have lemon grass, several kinds of kale and cabbage, morning glory, long beans, several kinds of basil, cilantro/coriander, celery greens, and on and on and on.
You can't cook Thai food without chilies!
The green bulbs are Thai eggplant ...
This stall was full of dried seafood, and the smell about knocked me out ...
Fruit! The red, fuzzy ones are rambutan. Delicious!
I've never seen so many kinds of eggs for sale as we see here in Thailand. All colors and sizes and from all kinds of birds.
More fruit, including limes, bananas, longan ...
Rambutan, mangosteen, and longan ...
These women were making wrappers for spring rolls. They grabbed a handful of dough, swirled it into a very thin, round pancake, flipped it, and stacked it with other freshly made wrappers. It took about 15 seconds to complete each one.
Snacks and sweets stall ...
This is a set-up for steaming sticky rice ... mmmm ... sticky rice ...
Chinese Thais use pig heads and parts for good luck offerings ...
Thai food is heavy on seafood. We saw thousands of crabs, shrimp, squid, and fish ...
A couple of years ago, the community raised the money to cover the market's largest meat section ...
... where we saw lots of families working together.
We were at the market from around 8:30 in the morning, and it was crowded and busy. The streets were packed, and every once in a while you'd hear one of these porters yelling for people to make way.
Veggie stand. The wrapped things are cauliflower.
After we finished at the market, we were off to cook what we'd bought. Khun Poo's nice kitchen burned down a couple of months ago, and while they were rebuilding, she held her classes at her sister's house in the slum. Here's a view of part of our walk. John and his mom, Sarah, did a Cooking with Poo class a couple of weeks ago and were able to cook in the new kitchen, but I enjoyed getting a look at a part of Bangkok I normally wouldn't see.
Two of my neighbors, Thuy and Mindy, making lemon grass salad.
Here's mine. Delicious!
Thuy about to dig in to her pad thai, which was the second dish we made.
Our last dish was massaman curry. We made the curry paste from scratch, toasting the whole spices and then pulverizing them with a mortar and pestle. We also toasted fresh ingredients like lemon grass, galangal, and garlic, and then pounded those together with the dry spices. If I did this every day I'd be ripped. Take a look at Khun Poo's lower arm muscles. Impressive, eh? You should see her biceps!
Here I am taking my punishment, er ... turn. I'm pleased to inform you that I finally went and had my hair dyed, so I don't look quite so scary now.
The finished product. This was by far the best massaman curry I've ever eaten ...
Here's the group from my neighborhood with Khun Poo and Khun Noi (not a flattering shot of her, sadly). Thuy, Mindy, Kerry, Debby, and me.
I highly recommend Cooking with Poo! It was great fun, Khun Poo and Khun Noi are great people, and it was a great opportunity to see Bangkok in an up-close-and-personal kind of way.
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