Cooking Class

“Ache. Ache. You help me take this.” (Translation: Asher, Asher, would you be able to assist me by moving this portable gas burner to the outside porch?) It was Mimi, the hostel owner. She was a short Thai woman with a direct, no-bullshit personality. She was covered by the wounds of a recent motorcycle accident but was showing noticeable signs of improvement in the three days I had been at her hostel. Despite a thick accent, her English was very good and she enjoyed chatting. But she didn’t waste time with prepositions or pronouns, she went more with a you’ll-understand-because-I-want-you-to way of communicating.

“Ache. Ache. You come.” (Asher, Asher, you still haven’t brought over the gas burner as I instructed, please do so immediately.) Mimi had promised to do a cooking class in the evening. One of the guests was a “returning guest” so the owner was keen, despite her injuries, to make her dinner. The rest of us were the lucky few who happened to be staying there at the same time. It was late afternoon and Mimi was preparing for the ‘demonstration’ out the front of the hostel. I was the only one around so I was helping her set up. She laid out some vegetables and some chicken on the table and put a wok on the burner which I had carried out from the back.

“Ache. Ache. You do this.” (Asher, Asher, please pound the garlic and chilli in the mortar and pestle as I have just demonstrated until you reach a fine paste.) It seemed the cooking demonstration had started despite the fact that I was the only one there. Mimi had decided she wanted to cook so she was going to cook. I broke down the garlic and chilli, a very simple task, but Mimi said I was doing it wrong. I was going too fast, I needed to pound it slower. I thought I was doing fine.

Mimi dropped the paste into a cold wok with some oil and put it over the heat. She added egg and bamboo shoots and some seasoning. After that was done Mimi got me to pound some more garlic and she made a snake bean and chicken stir fry with thai basil. She waited a while to cook anything more as it was still early and no one else was around apart from the two of us.

"Ache. Ache. Take picture"

After a while, others started showing up including the returning guest. The large night market next to the hostel had fed me well in previous nights. With my dinner already sorted for the night, I went to the market only to get a drink to go along with the meal (the returning guest was even willing to join me). My latest fascination in Thailand has been the longan fruit and the sweet, iced juice produced from it, available at many local markets. The fruit comes in bunches that look kind of like large, pale bunches of grapes. However once the brown shell is peeled off, the juicy fruit is kind of like a less-pungent lychee. I bought a large cup and headed back.

By the time I got back to the hostel, Mimi had prepared two curries and had two full rice cookers ready to go. I had been away for about five minutes. We passed around plates to everyone and had a nice meal out the front of the hostel. I sat next to Kengo, a baby-faced Japanese student who was on his first solo trip. I tried out my beginner Japanese on him, pointing to different foods on the table and saying their names in Japanese. He didn’t seem as impressed as I’d hoped. But then again he’d been speaking English the entire time and I hadn’t provided an ounce of praise.

“Ache. Ache. You come back, I cook for you.”