One of our favorite adventures was taking Thai cooking lessons at the Blue Elephant in Phuket.
Blue Elephant Cooking School is located at the site of the well-known Phra Pitak Chinpracha Mansion. This historic Sino-Portuguese style was built in 1903 by “Tan Ma Sieng” or Phra Phitak Chinpracha (1883-1949), Chinese Tin Baron, and ancestor of “Tandavanitj patriarch”.
The building is a combination of European and Chinese style. The architecture is European (Sino-Portuguese), while it was decorated in traditional Chinese style, especially with a big ventilator on the rooftop called “Shim Jae”, which is “Hok Kiean” feng-shui science. The front is open to the South and captures fresh breezes throughout the year.
This elegant old mansion is owned by the Tandavanitj tribe. In the past, it was used as the governor’s residence. Since the death of Khun Pracha Tandavanitj in 2006, his wife Khun Jularak Tandavanitj occasionally opened this historic 105 year-old building as a private house museum.
And because of its history and the beautiful scenic surrounds of this mansion, it was used as a location for several movies including “Heaven and Earth”, “the Killing Fields”, and TV’s “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”. Moreover it is also won a conservation award from the Thai authorities, in the 1990s.
Our class was small, Scott and I and a family from Slovenia spending the summer in Thailand. Their 12 year old son, Nicholas, is a budding chef and a character to say the least.
We started off by taking a trip to the market where we were educated on the local ingredients and spices. We were very pleased to learn that many of the ingredients we grow in our garden. We probably should have video taped the tour of the market. My writing skills are not good enough to accurately describe the experience.
We returned to the Blue Elephant and were assigned our cooking stations. Our menu included :
Massaman Curry with chicken
Stir fried prawns with roasted chili paste
Deep fried spring rooks stuffed with crab meat
Spicy eggplant salad with chicken and prawns
Every dish was amazing! We tasted as we went along, but each finished dish was taken away and kept warmed until we completed all 4 dishes and then we all sat together and ate our meal. We were completely stuffed. Thank god our classmates had a residence there and could take home the left overs.
Blue Elephant
Over view of market
Our instructor
Appetizing little goodies.
Happy couple cooking
Our class
Mary Ann's completed Massaman Curry with chicken
Our completed 4 course meal
