CHEF TUMMY THAI COOKING SCHOOL Koh Phangan
PHILOSOPHY AND OVERVIEW
WHAT WE DO THAT IS DIFFERENT
The Chef Tummy Thai Cooking School is designed for the adventurous amateur cook or professional chef who wants to get a broad overview of the pungent and tantalizing tastes of Thai cooking.
Morning or afternoon classes are available, as well as three-day and five-day intensive courses.
Class sizes are limited to give each student the maximum amount of time for instruction and questions.
WHAT YOU GET AT THE COOKING SCHOOL
- Three-hour overview of Thai cooking, including how to combine the individually pungent flavors of Thai cooking to make a balanced and tasty meal. Students receive a “market tour” at the cooking school to explain the individual components of Thai cooking. Thai cooking relies on the “Five Fantastic Flavors” of combining spicy, salty, sweet, sour/tangy and bitter tastes in an artful balance to make fantastic meals. Each class review these components and how they are blended together.
- Thailand has four major regions (South, Central, North and Northeastern)—each with different cooking styles, ingredients and dishes. The class gives an overview of these different styles to illustrate the great breadth of Thai cooking.
- Hands-on instruction on Thai cooking where you make and taste your own Thai food. Each student has a wok and cooking ring on which they learn Thai cooking techniques and secrets. In each class three to four dishes are prepared using fresh, seasonal ingredients. The bounty of fresh seafood available from fishing families on Koh Phangan Island is emphasized, as well as locally raised vegetables, fruit, poultry and pork. The Cooking School has its own organic herb garden to provide fresh and vibrant ingredients for your meal.
- Students receive recipes to take home with detailed explanations about preparation and artful presentation.
- Chef Tummy’s cooking tips and techniques—common sense ways to make your dishes interesting to look at and easy to make.
- Color glossary of Thai ingredients and their use so you can identify what you need to purchase to make great recipes.
- List of Thai ingredient stores and websites in your home country for purchasing Thai ingredients.
Chef Tummy teaches the cooking classes in English with assistance from experienced Thai chefs at the Haadlad Prestige Resort & Spa.
RECIPES
The Cooking School features authentic Thai recipes Chef Tummy learned while traveling 6,002 miles/9,680 kilometers in a year-long trip by motorcycle to learn family recipes from Aunties and Grandmothers from the four different regions of Thailand.
In addition, many of the recipes are time-tested dishes made by Chef’s Tummy’s Thai cooking mentor, Mr. Aow, whose family is well known for its tasty Thai and Chinese-style cooking with many restaurants in Thailand and Germany. The recipes featured showcase the different regional styles of cooking from Thailand, both traditional Thai and Chinese-influenced Thai.
WHAT MAKES THAI FOOD UNIQUE
Thai cooking is a balance of contrasting, pungent flavors combined in an artful balance. The Fantastic Five Flavors of Thai cooking are spicy, salty, sweet, sour/tangy and bitter. Thai cooking features a plenty of herbs and vegetables combined with quick cooking techniques to lock in flavor and nutrients.
Thai cooking has adapted influences from neighboring countries and trading partners like China, India, Burma/Myanmar and Laos. But the country’s cuisine is not a copycat of these traditions. The cuisine has adapted external influences and ingredients with domestic fresh fish, poultry, meats and a wide variety of herbs and vegetables to make a unique style of eating.
THE FANTASTIC FIVE FLAVORS OF THAI COOKING
Thai cooking artfully combines pungent flavors including spicy, salty, sweet, sour/tangy and bitter to make a delicious and perfumed balance. These “Fantastic Five Flavors” can be loosely grouped into five families.
Spicy Family: Fresh and dried chillies; aromatics such as garlic, galangal, ginger, onions; dried black and white peppercorns.
Sweet Family: Palm or coconut sugar; coconut cream, coconut milk or grated coconut; cane/castor sugar; sweet black soy sauce; sweet pickled garlic cloves; brown rice syrup; honey.
Salty Family: Fish sauce; shrimp paste; oyster sauce; soy sauce; yellow and black bean sauce; dried fish and shrimp; salted & preserved vegetables; regular salt.
Sour/Tangy Family: Limes, both regular and kaffir/wild versions; kaffir/wild lime leaf; lemongrass; tamarind paste; coconut vinegar; white distilled vinegar.
Bitter Family: Dark green vegetables such as bitter melon, eggplant; some medicinal herbs. Thai cooking sometimes features bitter ingredients as a counterpoint to the sweet and sour flavors and this fifth flavor will be emphasized in some dishes made at the Chef Tummy Thai Cooking School.
The Chef Tummy Thai Cooking School emphasizes how to combine these Fantastic Five Flavors to make memorable meals.
BACKGROUND ON CHEF TUMMY
Chef Tummy traveled over 6,000 miles on a motorcycle to taste regional Thai cooking from the real experts—the cooks and grandmothers who considered him worthy enough to share their family recipes. The book he wrote entitled Tasting Thai Food is under review with publishers in America, England and Australia. Excerpts of the Tasting Thai Food book are included in the TUMMY BOOKS section of this website.
Chef Tummy also attended Thai cooking classes at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, the Chiang Mai School of Thai Cooking in Chiang Mai and the SITCA School on Ko Samui. Prior relocating to Thailand, Chef Tummy worked in catering with his family in Boston, USA and attended the California Culinary Academy—Cordon Bleu school in San Francisco.
LOCATION OF THE CHEF TUMMY THAI COOKING SCHOOL
The School is located at the Haadlad Prestige Resort & Spa on Haad Salad (Salad Beach) in the peaceful and picturesque northern end of Koh Phangan Island.
Koh Phangan is approximately 380 miles south of Bangkok in the Gulf of Thailand. The Island can easily be reached from Bangkok by flying to the neighboring island of Ko Samui and taking a ferry to Koh Phangan. Travelers take also take a train or bus from Bangkok to the mainland port city of Surat Thani, then the beautiful 2½ hour ferry ride to Koh Phangan.
To see a map click here
To take a look at the stunning Haadlad Prestige Resort & Spa, please look at www.prestigeresortphangan.com.