Where: May Kaidee’s Cooking School and Restaurant, 29/4 Chang Moi Kao Road, Chang Moi, Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand
When: 9th March 2018
Alongside visiting the beautiful ruins of Wat Chedi Luang, our cooking class at May Kaidee’s Thai Vegetarian and Vegan Cooking School was without a doubt my favourite experience in Chiang Mai and one of my favourite of my whole month in Thailand. May Kaidee’s began in Bangkok (with also a cooking school there) and has expanded around the world, the founder’s beautiful story and personal journey to vegetarianism is inspiring and can be read on their website. They offer a range of classes from one off express classes to 5 day courses and online resources for vegan and vegetarian travellers.
We booked pretty last minute, just a couple of hours ahead and were lucky enough to get places that evening. We booked an express thai cooking lesson, this included instruction for 5 dishes, a recipe book and was 1000 bhat per person.
When we returned for our class, all the ingredients were laid out and prepared beautifully. Fresh lime leaves, thai ginger, carrots, tofu, coriander, galangal, coconut milk, chilli, coconut milk, soy sauces and fresh coriander made a colourful display waiting for our culinary experiments. Our friendly teacher introduced herself, we discussed ingredients and got our aprons on ready to start. We began with making our own chilli paste, a special house recipe to be used in the subsequent dishes.
Freshly made Tom Kha Soup
We then made a soup each, the boyfriend made Tom Yam Soup and I made Tom Kha Soup, we sat and enjoyed the fruits of our work, eating al fresco with a view of the Ou Sai Kham temple. The ingredients were similar but I was impressed with the distinct difference in taste resulting from the cooking subtle differences in cooking methods.
Next, we were taught to make two more classic Thai dishes – Massaman curry and Pad Thai. Both were completely full of flavour and having had a lot of vegan pad thai in the rest of my trip, this was my favourite.
Our final dish of the evening was mango sticky rice. Visually stunning and tasty, the rice was first coloured with blue butterfly pea flowers, and the dish was complemented by shredded coconut, coconut milk, fresh mango and banana.
Well, needless to say we were stuffed. So we took some home to have the next morning, I was extremely pleased that this was packaged in biodegradable packaging made of plant fibres.
I cannot recommend this experience and food enough, and if you don’t fancy cooking you can just the restaurant. It was fantastic and I look forward to adding these dishes to my own repertoire. Everything was so flavoursome, the teaching was unhurried and well thought out with ingredients and methods explained, and the recipe book a perfect addition to take home.
The Greedy Herbivore 
One Reply to “”