Winter Break Travels (Day 6)

February 02, 2022

Chiang Mai

Our first full day in Chiang Mai we spent a leisurely morning hanging at our hotel (The Experience Walking Street Hotel).

We then spent the afternoon/evening at learning about a traditional Thai family's culture and cooking hosted by the Raunkaew-Yanon Family.

We started with a tour of their home. The Raunkaew-Yanon family has lived in this same compound for 150-180 years. We learned a little of their history, Lanna culture, Thai tea, and tooth hygiene. We walked through the "garden", which was really a full farm with so many kinds of vegetables and herbs, I lost count. They even had a fairly large rice paddy. After the tour, we had our cooking lesson. We made 6 different dishes and they were all amazing.

We started by making an offering to the spirits of the house. According to tradition, spirits need food. Homeowners place offerings of food, flowers and burn incense daily. All this is designed to please the spirits that live on the land where the building is. The idea is "if you take care of the spirits, they will take care of you."

Our ingredients and prep tools

Our host talking us through what we will be using

Mortar and Pestle for making chili paste (lots of chili paste)

Teak wood cutting board

Ingredients for chili paste

Fresh ingredients for curries

Sliced eggplant

Making the paste

Prepping

Scraping out a coconut

Cooking

We split up to different stations and cooked different things. We all took turns making Pad Thai that we ate as an appetizer while we cooked the rest of the dishes. Dishes we made included:

Pad Thai

Dry Red Curry Chicken (Aou Kai)

Minced Pork with Tomato (Nam Prik Ong)

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup (Tom Som Kai)

Stir Fried Green Eggplant with Minced Pork (Phad Makauyaw Moo)

Banana in Coconut Milk