Vegan Thai cooking with May Kaidee

May Kaidee’s is a Vegan Thai Food restaurant, with 3 branches in Bangkok and one in Chiang Mai. It’s also probably the best food I had in all of Thailand! So what better place to take a cooking clas!

Back “home” (wherever I’m living with a kitchen), I’m always cooking. Mostly its asian food and sometimes something resembling Thai, but its hard to buy Green Curry paste without fish stock in London!! Anyways, since I left the UK I haven’t cooked once. Not a single meal. That’s exactly a month now, so I’m keen to get back into the kitchen.

I rocked up to one of the branches near Kao San Road, and joined 2 Americans for the class, led by the one and only May Kaidee. She has been a vegan for over 10 years, and cooking in restaurants since she was a teenager. First we went to grab some ingredients and have a look at the varied vegetables you can buy in Thailand. Thai Basil for example is very different from the basil we are used to, its a lot like aniseed (or Sambuca!). We also watched a lady making rice paper for spring rolls. She had a rice dough and a large hot plate, and simply rolls the dough on the plate and removes it. The plate is so hot that a thin layer of the dough sticks to it. It takes only seconds to cook and then she peels it off to cool down. Her hands must be tough because she doesnt use any gloves and they’re constantly close to the heat. She has been doing this for years too.

Back at the restaurant, we start by making the all important green curry paste, by taking the ingredients in a pestle and mortar and grinding them up. Quite simple once you know what goes in to it! Then there were 2 stoves out the back for us to use, so the American couple shared one and I got one to myself. All the ingredients were ready to go, sliced and diced, and we had a menu of about 11 dishes to go through!

Luckily we got a copy of the recipes, not just to follow during the class but to remember for later! We made loads of small portions of Green Curry, Masaman Curry, Pad Thai etc, tasting them along the way of course! Eventually we had a load of Vegan Thai dishes all prepared by us so we sat down inside the restaurant and made spring rolls to go with them for lunch, but we were already kinda full! When we entered the restaurant area, there was a western girl sitting down to lunch. We were all wearing our aprons and hats and sat down to eat. I’m sure, if only for a split second, she thought we were the real chefs behind the operation and using May as the friendly Thai face front haha. But we assured her we were just doing a class and the food she ate would be made by a real Thai Chef hahaha.

FYI, when you eat Thai Food (REAL Thai Food), don’t eat the lemon grass. Have you ever tried it? It’s horrible, like eating twigs or something and it sticks in your throat. Have you ever wondered why the hell it’s even in there? Me too. Thai’s use it in cooking for the flavour, but never intend for you to actually eat it. Although it would be nice if they could take it out before serving, its left in there. So there you go, don’t feel bad about picking out or leaving the lemon grass in it next time!

After lunch we had the traditional awesome Thai desert of Mango and Banana on Sticky rice with coconut milk! After teaching/making us sing a little song she made about the class, May put on some traditional accessories and performed a dance for us! Visit their website to find out more or visit one of their branches, it costs around 1200B. You can also take the class at their Chiang Mai branch. Can’t wait to be cooking again when I eventually have a kitchen again!

Chiang Mai »« Bangkok, Round 2