There are a few pros and cons about visiting Phuket. Although this city is tourist central and almost everyone here speaks English (unlike Bangkok where it was sometimes difficult to ask for help), the downfall is the fact that all the locals know tourists flock to Phuket so prices of food, accommodations, and fun activities are a bit pricier compared to other cities in Thailand.
That being said, one of the more expensive activities we took part in was a cooking class held by the Sous Chef at Mom Tri’s Boathouse. We learned how to make a 5 course meal which included papaya salad, tom yum soup, seafood curry, pad thai, and a pumpkin custard dessert.
For every dish, 4 people (out of 6 in the class) were asked to go to the kitchen to cook. Each person had a variation of the dish so that we could all sample various levels of spiciness or tangy flavours when changing a small part of the recipe. For example, my friend got to make a fruit salad with apples, pears, jackfruit and pomelo (pictured above) instead of using green papaya like I did (pictured below).
I seem to have zero photos of the tom yum soup, so we’ll skip this dish and move on to the curry. Above is a plate of shrimp, eggplant seeds, pineapples, fresh red curry paste (made in house!), grape tomatoes, and various spices for one full serving of curry. We were told to heat oil in the wok and then throw the curry paste in first. The aroma from the burning curry paste made all of us choke from the spiciness! I look like I’m laughing in the photo below, but trust me, I felt like I was about to cry! (I’m such a wimp when it comes to spicy foods…)
I decided to only try one of the shrimps from the curry. I may or may not have teared up from ONE SHRIMP. Moving on to the pad thai!
Here’s my sad excuse of an entree. I had a tough time trying to pick out the crushed peanuts before I could try the dish (yay for anaphylactic food allergies!). Don’t even get me started on how horrible the plating of the noodles look. I know to never quit my day job because I will receive a guaranteed 0/10 gold stars for this presentation!
The pumpkin custard dessert was delicious! We didn’t have a big hand in making this dish, as our instructor simply hand whisked the custard ingredients together just to walk us through how to make it. Check out the texture of this stuff! The coconut milk gives a bubbly, super textured consistency to the custard! I was not expecting this when I cut into this with my spoon, but it was yummy nonetheless!
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