Cooking

I can't wait to cook for all of you guys what i learned. I took detailed note and lot of pictures, because sadly, I don't know when that's going to be. Thai food is so easy! At least the 8 dishes that I learned today:
Gaeng Phet Daeng (Curry Spicy Red) Gai (chicken) : a soupier coconut curry with veggies.
Phat (stirfried) Phet (spicy) Muu (pork): a fiery rich curry
Gaeng Gai (curry chicken): a simple drier chicken (or whatever beast) curry
Phat Gaprow (stirfried basil) with other stuff. MAde with gaprow, one of the two thai basils. Ga Prow is the one that's sort of acrid or antiseptic, but very good when cooked. Also called holy basil. Maeng Lak is the other one that has a sort of anise-like flavor, sometimes called sweet basil. We made this dish with shicken. IT's a southern Thai classic, a spicy basil-and-chicken stirfry with a molasses-like flavor.
Pad Thai. The only noteworthy detail here is that everyone makes it differently and the orangish-red flavor comes from tomato.
Laap: This cold ground-meat salad is one of the things I learned in the class I took in Laos two years ago. It always varies though. Worth ordering if you ee it on a menu. Also spelled Lab, Lap, or Larb.
Spring rolls: Kay, Chris' wife, the kitchen brains of the operation and a fantastic cook, makes hers with wrapper made from Kale! I didn't think kale lent itself to being processed into spring-roll wrappers. But it does. They get a really nice crispy texture.
And fried sweet fruit thing. Rob and I could barely stand thinking about eating another bite, since we had eaten every dish we had cooked up to this point, but these were yummy so had eat four or five. My god. I can't recall the last time I ate so much good food. We cooked small portions, but nonetheless those are formidable odds. Two men, eight dishes, three and a half hours.