Thailand Part Three: The Phuket Cookery School, with recipe for Massaman Paste.
- kirsty richardson
- Jul 4, 2016
- 7 min read
My boyfriend Lio and I went to Thailand earlier this year. He booked me a few treat days. One of them was us a day at a Thai cookery school. It was on an Island just off Phuket. The location was absolutely breathtaking. Set on the edge of a secluded beach, under a large open structure, looking out to sea. If Carlsberg made cookery schools......
The recipes were pretty basic and more catered to the western pallet. They showed us how to make Tom Yum soup, massaman curry, chicken with cashew nuts and crab fried rice. The curry and the Tom Yum soup were all made using pre prepared paste which was a bit of a let down.
However the surroundings were so beautiful. It was like heaven laid on the decking in the sun looking out to sea when we had our breaks.
It was also nice for Lio and I to cook together, something we never get to do. Life with a successful french chef/hotel owner is exciting there's always something going on. However, it's far from what normal couples do. Lio works 7 days a week at this time of year, and as I'm beginning to find out a day off is never a day off when you own a hotel! We have done many things in the few months we've been together. A few weeks ago we we're at the French Ambassador's private residence for the second time. Along with 25 other prominent french chefs in the UK, including Raymond Blanc. I've followed Lio to his cooking demonstrations at food festivals. We've been to Nice and The Historical Grand Prix at Monaco. We've eaten out countless times from Turkish Kebabs to Michelin starred food at The Yorke Arms. However we don't get to do the normal couple stuff like cook together, sometimes all I want to do is sit on the sofa, in front of the TV with him with a bag of crisps watching take me out, but no likey, no lighty! So our holidays are so precious and it was lovely to cook together.
The highlight of the day was a tour of the local market. The teachers drove us to a huge indoor market with stalls everywhere selling meat, vegetables, fish, street food stalls selling breakfast treats, spices and curry pastes, even a stall making fresh coconut milk and coconut cream.
The coconuts are pushed into a machine where they are ground, then water filters over the grounds to produce milk, and a version with less water which produces cream. Busy locals then simply turn up at the market before work, grab a bag of coconut milk and then a curry paste, which has been already ground and cooked (as pictured below) and pop it home for after work.
Thus shattering my illusions, when the cookery school teacher informed me hardly anybody makes their own curry paste regularly at home. Only on special occasions. It seems a theme in the modern world that people either don't have time, can't be bothered or don't know how to make things from scratch. This is such a shame.
Well I do make my own paste still from scratch and I'm going to continue to do so! It's easy even if you just throw it all in a blender like me, it tastes far fresher and far superior to those foisty tasting bought pastes. It's not difficult to make and it keeps in the fridge for around a month and a few more months in the freezer! Although mine never last long enough we eat a lot of this food! All you need to do is set aside an hour and you've got buckets of paste! I make green, red, yellow (mild for the kids) and massaman (a muslim curry paste from the south of thailand which is also good for kids as it's not spicy).
Then I get bun cases (normal size not large muffin) and lay them on pieces of tinfoil and then fill the cases with paste (this is the right amount for a curry for four servings) then i wrap them up and put sticky labels on saying which ones they are. These little packages can then be put in the freezer. This is just an idea I came up with when I realised I didn't have enough jars. Although, there may be better ways, this is the one I use, it works fab for me. I also save a few portions in jars and keep these in the fridge to use over the next couple of weeks.
I usually do massaman for all the family or I do a red/green curry for the grown ups and a yellow one if the kids/Lio are with me. Despite what Lio says he can not do medium! I think I nearly killed him off with my curries when I first met him. I know now that yellow or massaman is the way for a delicate chef's palate. Red and Green for a Donny girl who likes a cigarette and a drink and spicy food!
I think my palate was wrecked working in an Indian restaurant as a teenager with a load of Sikh boys, who were fab. When I started working there I was just a white English girl from the suburbs who knew virtually nothing about other cultures. The boys were great fun and so respectful to us, despite us being the wild teenagers we were, they properly looked after us and became great friends.
When I first started working there I had never eaten curry. The rest of the staff including the english staff too who'd been there a while tucked into a massive pan of what they called "staff curry" after the shift. This was a spicy dish, usually made with chicken necks and full of potatoes and bits of bone. It was so tasty. The sikh boys said it was too greasy and not like they had at home but at the end of the night, as growing teenagers, we were all starving. I was scared to eat it, it seemed so exotic and foreign to me. The Bengali managers used to then wait till they had cashed up and then cooked me a separate mild dish.
The Sikh boys fascinated me, with their turbans, beautiful almond shaped eyes, and best of all their Bangra dancing. They would proudly display their moves in the isles of the restaurant in between serving tables, to any customer that would watch them. I asked them question after question about their culture which they gladly answered. To this day I still know how to say 'kiss my arse' in punjabi and 'my life' in hindi.
I was getting fed up of watching everyone else eat before me and a little ashamed I was making the managers cook after work. I wanted to eat what everyone else ate. So I gradually built up my tolerance by eating small amounts of staff curry. After a few weeks I joined in the macho ritual of the chilli eating competition at the end of the night, where they would bring out jars of pickled chilli and we had a scream. I used to take left over staff curry for breakfast, I'd leave it out on the kitchen work top and my mum would play pop that there was yellow oil on the counter and that my bedroom stunk of curry! We would finish work around 3am, without fail my mum would come into my bedroom hoovering at 9am! I was paid a pittance there, I think £1.50 an hour, but the experience I gained of other cultures was rich. I would love to know how they are all doing now.
This experience started my obsession with spicy food from around the world, which eventually lead me to being able to eat food as spicy as Thai people have it. When I go to a thai restaurant I always ask 'give me it as spicy as you eat it'. Sadly they look at me puzzled and most of them don't believe me over here. Thankfully in phuket they did and I had some amazing food and very spicy!
Anyway back to the curry pastes. The recipes I use are from a very popular and comprehensive Thai cook book which a few of my friends have. It's called a little taste of thailand and if you are interested in learning thai cooking I would urge you to order/go out and buy it. It's been like a thai cooking bible to me and I have learnt everything I know from this book. It's the only thai cookbook I have and it's the only one I need. They also do other countries in the series and I have many of them. They're not expensive and they are the best cookbooks I own and the ones I most regularly use. They are compact and I take them on holiday to the respective country when self catering. I had my own little tapas bar on the balcony every night one year in Majorca when I took a little taste of spain. We found a fab local supermarket. And no I'm not on commission, but I wish I was!
The hardest part of making a thai curry paste and the reason I can go weeks without doing it, is being arsed to go into Leeds, to buy the ingredients from the chinese supermarket. It's difficult to get fresh galangal which is a rhizome a bit like ginger. Same goes with shrimp paste and lime leaves. I have ordered online before from Thai Food Direct.
MASSAMAN PASTE RECIPE
Massaman curry is not that spicy so it's good for all the family. I just make the kids one a little bit sweeter. If you have a nut allergy just leave the nuts out. If you have a shellfish allergy I would cook something else shrimp paste is what gives Thai curry paste it's unique taste. I have tried it vegan style and it's not great I would go and find a recipe from a vegan or vegetarian recipe as they will have tweaked the ingredients to make it just as delicious. Simply leaving it out would not work. Same goes with the fish sauce it's essential and there will be recipes specially designed for vegan's and vegetarians. Thai food is all about balance and these ingredients are specifically balanced and it's an authentic recipe. There will be loads of authentic veggie recipes as the buddhist monks are often vegan.
MASSAMAN PASTE INGREDIENTS
4 cardamom pod (break open and use seeds only)
2 inch piece cinnamon stick
5 cloves
2 tablespoon coriander stalks (unless you can find roots then use 5)
1/3 tablespoon cumin
2 Dried whole chilis or a teaspoon of chilli flakes
2 inch piece galangal
1 head garlic
1 stalk lemongrass
1/3 tablespoon peppercorns
1 tablespoon salt
4 shallots
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
1/2 Nutmeg grated
In the recipe it will say use a pestle and mortar, don't bother, unless you want to do it by hand the easiest way is to throw it in a blender with 4 tablespoons of oil and a bit of water just so much that it will blend to a paste. Then use it and freeze the rest as above. Makes about 250g.
Here is a link to the BBC website recipe for massaman curry if you don't want to buy the book.
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