Related Articles

• Taste Makers
• Pretty Sweet
• Give it a Thai
• Tasting Thailand
• Cookbook Confidential

 Email  Print  del.icio.us  digg  Feed

Subscribe to Seattle Homes and Lifestyles : Print Subscribe to Seattle Homes and Lifestyles : Web

Pranee teaches her students, including Cynthia Coleman (left) and Joyce Herman, some of the secrets of Thai cooking during a class at the Mercer Island home of Deborah and Richard Ferse. For more information about Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen's cooking courses, visit ilovethaicooking.com.

The Menu

Miang Kam Leaf-wrapped tidbits with toasted coconut, peanuts, shallots, ginger, lime, chili and sweet ginger sauce

Pork Satay Grilled skewered pork with homemade chili sauce

Gaeng Leang Thai country-style soup with kabocha squash

Hua Mok Baked red curry salmon wrapped in banana leaf

Kao Man Steamed coconut jasmine rice

Bua Loi Nam Tao Squash dumplings in warm coconut milk

Thai Cocktails: Thai Purple Basil Gin and Tonic Lychee Martini Tom Yum Martini

* All recipes by Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen

Click here to find out where to shop for ingredients.

“Believe me,” says Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen, “Thai cooking is really simple.” Easy for her to say, I think; she grew up in Thailand, at the apron strings of the village chef. I've spent my share of hours in the kitchen, and Thai food still intimidates me. But Pranee wins me over before I pick up my knife.

“You just have to remember the four main flavors: sweet, sour, salty and spicy,” she advises. “How much do you need of each? Your tongue will tell you.” It sure sounds easy.

We're five minutes into a basic Thai cooking class, and Pranee, our Phuket-born cooking instructor, is about to give us all four flavors in one sensational bite. She's prepared a classic Thai snack: miang kam. We've barely tied our own aprons, and we're already learning to stuff her expertly chopped ingredients—toasted coconut, limes, gingerroot, shallots and peanuts—into Thai pepper plant leaves.

“You don't bite twice,” Pranee instructs, adding a sprinkle of fiery Thai chilis to the first tidbit and passing it to the student beside her. We all hold our breath while the guinea pig tucks it into her mouth all at once. Her eyes light up, and we fall on the miang kam in a tangle of excitement. While we chew, Pranee starts her class, passing out instructions and ingredients.

“The recipes seem complicated, but Thai cooking is easy,” she promises, smiling, as usual. “All you have to do is prep the vegetables, and I've already done most of that for you.”

Pranee teaches classes at cooking schools and in private homes, and today she's assembled a group of students to join me in a Mercer Island kitchen that overflows with a cornucopia of fall foods: vibrant kabocha squash, nuts, onions, spices and fragrant leafy herbs. She invites us to taste, taste, taste as we learn how to smash lemongrass with the thwack of a cleaver, shave a block of palm sugar into fine snow, peel gingerroot with the back of a knife and cut round vegetables Thai-style. She reminds us that cooking ethnic food doesn't mean losing our seasonal sensibility.

“People seem to think we have to decide between cooking Thai food and cooking locally, but the truth is, we can do both,” says Pranee, who finds many of her ingredients at a local farmers market. She introduces us to gaeng leang, a country-style soup with gorgeous orange broth that gets its flavor from shrimp, chopped kabocha and seasonal vegetables.

When Pranee has reviewed all of the appetizer recipes, teaching us skills we'll need to prepare them, the kitchen erupts in a flurry of activity. One minute, the woman next to me admits she's not a pro in the kitchen; the next, she's whipping together ingredients for the simple, spicy Thai chili dipping sauce we'll use for pork satay.

Together we move on to the main course. Pranee demonstrates how to clean and heat banana leaves over the stove to make them more supple and shows us how to wrap them around the curried salmon pieces we've prepared. We all nod and start folding. When I add my little salmon package to the others, I feel a bit smug—our work looks darn near perfect.

For dessert we make bua loi nam tao, dumplings served in a sweet brown sugar and coconut milk sauce. A recipe that Pranee has been making since she was 13, it requires just two ingredients: puréed kabocha squash and glutinous rice flour. She mixes these together until they form a dough similar to Play-Doh. As we roll the dough into little balls, Pranee turns from teaching to stories about her childhood in Thailand. When she talks about making bua loi nam tao at 13, and how her mother sent her into the forest to collect banana leaves, we're riveted. With Pranee's stories, every part of our dinner is delicious, new, exciting—as if we're there in Thailand with her.

Two days later, my husband and I have guests coming and as I'm pawing through dinner ideas, I find Pranee's recipe packet. Suddenly a trip to the closest Asian grocery doesn't seem like such an outrageous idea. I thwack and shave and peel and cut, and in a few hours in my little (and decidedly Western) kitchen, a friend and I have re-created her entire class menu.

“When did you learn to make such amazing rice?” my husband asks. It's just jasmine rice infused with rich coconut cream and scented with lemongrass. It took me five minutes to make.

“Tuesday night,” I reply. I think that's all he needs to know. 

Jess Thomson writes about food and travel for magazines, as well as her food blog, Hogwash.