In Phuket we took part in a hands-on cooking class. The day began with a short ride out to the Blue Elephant Restaurant and Cooking School. The Blue Elephant has branches in a number of cities, the original being in Bangkok.

The Blue Elephant Restaurant and Cooking School is housed on the grounds of the former Governor's home.

We were offered a welcoming drink of some sort of lemony beverage. It was far too sweet for my taste and we noticed that most of the others in our class only took “thank you” sips. There were only 12 of us in the class and we began with a short walk from the school to the market in town. The chef who accompanied us pointed out a number of local delicacies, herbs, and spices. We were familiar with some of these having been to Thai restaurants in the US, but several were new. This was especially true of some of the fruits and produce that are only available locally.

Some scenes at the market.

After the market visit and the trek back to the school – in 97° heat with about 100% humidity, we took a few minutes to cool off and then went into the classroom. This was a pretty standard demonstration classroom with the chef’s station at the front and overhead mirrors to see the detail work. We were to cook four dishes: a soup starter; a salad; a main course; a side dish. The chef demonstrated the preparation of the soup and the side dish and then off we went to the “lab.”

We had expected to be put in teams of two or three and each cook one of the dishes, but we were surprised to find that this was to be a real hands-on class. Everyone would be cooking all four dishes and what you cooked is what you would be eating for lunch. Talk about pressure to perform!!

Cooking school. The entire setup at left, my station in center, and the classroom at right.

We each did our two dishes and everyone marked their own dish with a small paper marker number for each dish. For instance Bonnie and I were at stations six and seven, so each of our dishes had a six or a seven marked on the side with a tag.

After a second demonstration of the other two dishes, it was back to the lab and we prepared the other two. We then were shown to a small private dining room where we were served all of our dishes, still hot, warm or cold as required by the type of dish. WOW! We discovered that we could rally cook Thai.

Yes, we loved it!

The menu consisted of Coconut Milk Soup with Chicken and Coconut Chips, Crispy Golden Purse with Green Curry Prawn and Chicken Stuffing, Spicy Green Mango Salad with Crispy Fish, and Stir-fried Red Curry Chicken and Long Beans. In addition to the food, we were presented with “goody” bags on our way out that contained a Thai Spice Booklet and a couple of the Blue Elephant packaged specialties in a nice tote bag. We had been given Blue elephant aprons at the beginning of the class, but we chose to keep them in their original wrappers and bring them home fresh and clean, so they also went into the goodie bag.

We then had a short ride back to the ship and we are looking forward to our two upcoming sea days to relax and recuperate before our two-day visit to Sri Lanka.

Stay tuned…