Through Nirwa Homestay we found out about a cooking class ran by one of their close friends, the Payuk Bali restaurant which seemed like a good option for us. We were picked up after breakfast at around 8.30am. From the start we knew we were going to be having a really good laugh, the owner was very funny and we he understood us well.

Our first stop was the local market in his home village, he took us around the various market stalls showing us the different vegetables, herbs, spices and fruit that are all grown throughout Bali. It was a pretty dirty market and very local which was a nice change from the busy tourist markets in Ubud. The stall owners again were really accommodating and happy for us to be there, we were the only westerners in the area which again was a nice change.

He’d already picked up the vegetables fresh that morning at 4am and so there was no need for us to pick anything up they just wanted to show us around. Our next stop was a pleasant surprise he took us into the elementary school in the village, the same school that he attended when he was a child. It was lovely to be there and to interact with the children’s plus it was no problem for the teachers for us to be there looking around. He then explained about the rice that grows in Ubud, the main crops and how the community help to harvest the rice together for no payment other than a portion of the rice crop.

When we arrived at his family home compound he explained to us about the family temple, why they do offerings and we also learned that due to the relaxed life of the Balinese his grandmother was still alive at 111! It wasn’t her who helped Helen with the making of her offerings perhaps his mother but it was really nice to take the time to make the traditional offerings together and she even planted a few Indonesian flowers in Helen’s hair.

We watched a display of coco-nut oil being reduced down for the production of their weekly cooking oil and we also learned about the roasting of Bali coffee following this with a cup of the freshly ground stuff and some deliciously fried bananas in palm sugar honey. This was enjoyed at the back of the family compound where they have a stunning location for a restaurant with an open kitchen, this is where we would be learning to cook.

Here’s what we learned to cook:

• Base Gede – the multi-purpose spice made into a paste from ingredients such as ginger, galangal, turmeric, chilli, garlic, shallot, nutmeg, lemongrass and so on. The list of ingredients for this paste is long. We had to grind it all together using a motor and pestle.

• Sup Timun – or cucumber soup as we would know it, including black eyed peas, red beans and coconut milk along with the main base gede paste.

• Nasi Kunung (yellow rice) The method of making yellow rice using coconut cream, lime and bay leaves and the base gede. We were particularly drawn to their original-looking rice cooker/steamer.

• Gado Gado – one of the all time traditional Indonesian dishes, a vegetable salad with peanut sauce. The vegetables are all blanched in preparation for the salad and served with a boiled egg plus tempe fried in coconut oil. The peanut sauce was a little like making the paste but with pre-fried peanuts, garlic, shallot, aromatic ginger, brown sugar, fresh lime and chilli.

• Sate Lilit – minced fish on a skewer. We see this all the time on the street stalls, fish satay as we may know them to be called. We had to really mince the fish using a large scale mortar and pestle and long piece of coffee tree branch. By hand the tuna fish was mixed in together with the base geed, an egg, lime juice, fried shallot, palm sugar and coconut milk. We then cooked them lightly on the barbecue. They were better tasting when first cooked.

• Pasen be Pasih / Pepes Ikan (grilled fish in banana leaf) Again with tuna fish, base geed, bay leaves and 1 tomatoe, the mixture was bound together and steam cooked in banana leaves.

We also cooked a Balinese style chicken dish which was perhaps our favourite of them all, and a sweet desert in the form of braised banana in palm sugar sauce. All the dishes were cooked collectively so we would each have a part in the final piece. We could taste the flavours along the way and decide whether more salt should be added and so on. And at the end we were more than happy to sit in their restaurant overlooking the tropical jungle and enjoying the fine food.

The only other thing left to complete our cultural experience in Ubud for us was to go and watch a traditional Balinese dance. We didn’t have to look very far as our home stay hosts recommended that we go to the fire dance taking place at the temple next door. It cost 80,000 IDR each per ticket and without going into too much detail we thoroughly enjoyed it. From having seen bits of the show at the Royal Palace, this show was much less of a grand affair and the main soundtrack was provided by a large group of men all acting as monkeys in the story.

As with all of these things there is a plot and a romance and death, a little like their own version of Romeo and Juliet. It was very well done though and at the end of the performance there was a trance dance using piping hot coconut shavings for the performer to kick through and dance within. It was totally bizarre and like nothing we had seen before. It was way better than we thought it was going to be.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0, 18mm f4, 90mm Tele-Elmarit f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We hope you enjoyed attempting some of the previous recipes from our Yangshou Cooking experience, so following on from this we’ve decided to tempt you even further with another review of our second favourite cooking course undertaken whilst travelling in Asia.

Helen had previously experienced a Chiang Mai cookery school programme when visiting Thailand back in 2004. Her experience then was good and gave her a real taste for Thai food and cooking, she did find it very inspirational indeed. This time around, Dave having never visited Thailand before was keen to do a cooking class and Helen wanted to have another go too! This time though we were looking for a class that offered something different from the everyday schools in Chiang Mai, and we came across the Thai Farm Cooking School.

We chose this particular school because it is located around 17km outside of Chiang Mai on a beautiful farm where they grow their own vegetables, herbs and organic fresh ingredients to cook with. They have two kitchens prepared for groups to cook aswell as a lovely outside eating area. Go to their website and take a look for yourself!!

Our guide and chef Tommy had a good sense of humour and for his age was a very well accomplished chef and teacher. We chose a curry paste from a choice of red, green or yellow, we also picked a soup dish, a noodle dish and a dessert. There were 3 different dishes to choose from in each section so the choices were good.

We chose to cook different dishes so we could taste each others food. Like the Yangshou Cooking School we each had our own prep and cooking station and Tommy would demonstrate a dish and we would follow by cooking it, he gave us many tips on spice, sauces and flavour. Too much spice would equal sexy lips!!

We both love Thai food so this was never going to be a let down for us! But it was a great day, starting off with a market tour going through the ingredients used in Thai cooking and when we arrived at the farm we had a garden tour taking us through their organic vegetable patches.

We made our own curry pastes – Dave chose a red curry and Helen a yellow one. We cooked a noodle dish each and whilst Helen cooked the hot and sour Tom yam soup Dave cooked a chicken Tom Kaa Gai.  As there was ingredients left over for the spring rolls we even got to make a few of those too!  What we couldn’t eat we took away with us for dinner later on!

This wasn’t the cheapest option of doing a cooking class in Chiang Mai as this is sighted as one of the top activities to do in the area, but it was pretty good value for money and we enjoyed the location, the chef and our tour group were all lovely too!

For a full day class we paid 1850 Thai Baht each, which is considerably more than the 1000 baht offering on their website. This works out to be around £35, which when compared to the Yangshou cooking school is a hell of a lot more!! Cost of travelling in Thailand however is considerably more than China, so for those of you on a budget there may be other cooking schools in Chiang Mai that are more appealing!

So for your pleasure we have a few recipes below, let us know if you try them!

Yellow Curry with Chicken / Tofu for vegetarian option – serves 2

Curry paste:

3 red dried chilles (soak in cold water for 15 minutes before use)
1 tbsp of chopped shallots
1tsp of chopped galangal *
1 tbsp of chopped lemongrass
2 cloves chopped garlic
1/4 tsp roasted cumin seeds
1/4 tsp roasted coriander seeds
1 tsp chopped tumeric
1 tsp yellow curry powder
1 tsp chopped ginger

Other ingredients:

70 grams of sliced chicken / Tofu (vegetarian)
1 cup of coconut milk
1.5 cup of water
1 cup chopped potatoes
1/3 cup of sliced onions
1 stem of spring onion
1 tbsp of fish sauce or soy sauce
1 tsp of sugar
1/4 tsp of salt

For the curry paste:

Put the ingredients for the curry paste in the mortar. Pound with the pestle until everything is mixed and ground thoroughly.

(we were doing this for at least 10 minutes!)

For the curry:
Put half cup of coconut milk in a pot and heat until boiling. Add chicken or tofu and curry paste. Stir until almost done. Add water, onions, potatoes and the rest of the coconut milk. When the potatoes are soft season with fish sauce or soy sauce, sugar and salt. Add spring onions. Serve with rice.

You can try different vegetables with this curry, we’ve tried butternut squash, sweet potatoe and courgettes, anything that will absorb the spices and flavour nicely will work. A little hint with the rice – we love to add coconut cream, cardamon and star anise to add some aromatic flavours.

* you can pick up dried Galangal from alternative supermarkets such as asian, chinese or organic.

Fried Noodles – Pad Thai

This has to be one of those dishes everyone loves from Thailand! It’s always first on the list when we arrive! There are prawns in this photograph but the recipe below is vegetarian with tofu – if you want to add prawns then feel free to do so!

Ingredients – Serves 2

80 grams rice noodles
1 cup of bean sprouts
2 tbsp of tofu, cut into small pieces
1 egg
1 tbsp of chopped pickled white raddish
1 tbsp of crushed roasted peanuts
1/3 cup of ripe tamarind juice (or 2 tsp of white vinegar mixed with 3 tbsp of water)
1.5 tsp of sugar
1 tsp fish sauce or soya sauce
1 tsp of chopped Chinese leek or spring onion
1 tsp of dried shrimps
a pinch of chilli powder
3 tbsp of oil
a pinch of salt
3 cloves crushed garlic

Heat up the oil in the wok on medium heat. Place tofu and fry until crunchy. Then turn the heat down to low. Add garlic, pickled raddish, (dried or fresh shrimps optional), chilli powder and stir until fragrant. Add tamarind juice (or vinegar ) and noodles and turn the heat up to medium. Stir fry until the noodles are soft. Turn the heat down to low. Make place by moving the noodles to another side of the wok. Add the egg and scramble. Add fish sauce, sugar, salt, crushed peanuts, bean sprouts and Chinese leek and turn the heat up to high. Stir fry thoroughly until well mixed. Serve with a piece of lemon and fresh salad.

Something for the sweet toothed!

Mango with sticky rice – YUM!!!
Serves 1-2 so double your ingredients for this one!

1 cup of steamed sticky rice *
1/2 cup of coconut cream
1 ripe mango (peel, remove seed and slice)
1-2 tbsp of sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Put the coconut cream, sugar and salt in a pot. Heat until boiling. Turn the heat off. Add steamed sticky rice. Mix well together and let to cool. Serve with mango.

You can buy this dish on the streets as we did one day on our way to the train station. It’s a very sweet tasting dish but works so well with the mango.

* You can buy sticky rice online or at Asian and Chinese supermarkets. The best tips for steaming sticky rice is to soak it first in cold water for a minimum of 4 hours or even overnight. Afterwards wash the rice with fresh water at least two times. Put the sticky rice in a steamer and steam for about 30 minutes until the rice is sticky and soft. When the rice is cooked always keep it in a closed container to prevent it from drying out and becoming hard. If the rice cools you can always steam it again.

Ever so the relaxed Thai ways we love how ingredients are measured out in cups, and the old fashioned tablespoon measures! Cook things for about this or about that! Ha! but seriously the food will taste amazing! Let us know if you attempt to try any of these dishes and if you’re feeling brave you could share your photos online!

Enjoy!

This is the first in a series of reviews taken from our experiences of several cooking classes that we participated in whilst travelling through Asia. We’re both foodies and love to explore new cuisine, this could have something to do with creativity. We both love to photograph and create nice imagery and design and we both like to design and create new and exciting food, and then photograph it! It all seems to be very complimentary!!

Whilst on the road, living out of our bags, on buses, trains and in hostels we didn’t get to cook and prepare our own food nearly as much as we would do on an ordinary day back home. In China we were really luck whilst staying in Beijing, we had an apartment for a month which mean’t we could go out and choose our ingredients from the local farmers market, this in itself was such a fantastic experience. Eating out all the time does take it’s toll but this is also part of the experience of exploring a country and it’s delights.

Taking part in a cooking class every so often mean’t we could explore further into the way the region or the country works with their local ingredients and taught us about the principles of their cuisine.It also mean’t we could eat everything we cooked!

We’re going to start with a course that we both loved and rate very highly in our travelling and food experiences. This was at The Yangshou Cooking School in Yangshou, Guangxi Province, China.

Their location on the banks of the Li River is stunning surrounded by karst peaks, bamboo rafts, and tourists! The course we did was a half day class starting at 8am with a local market tour. This is something that is very consistent with cooking courses in Asia, always starting with a market tour to give you an insight into where they source their ingredients from, what is local to the region and the atmosphere of a busy market place can be absorbed. Our chef and guide Kelly picked up on key ingredients that we would use such as bamboo shoots, chilli, chinese mushrooms and chinese eggplant before taking us back to the school.

We were informed about the morning, what we would be cooking and how we would do it. We each had our own cooking station with a wok on a gas stove, our own chopping boards, knives, bowls, oils and sauces for cooking with. The ingredients were portioned out for us and we would then prepare each dish before cooking it. Kelly demonstrated and then we cooked, and then we ate! For the final 4 dishes though we cooked them one by one and then had our own little banquet sat outside with the riverbanks below us – pretty idyllic!

Chinese cooking is all about sharing and dishes are served as a matter of balance. Hot and spicy dishes such as chicken with ginger and chilli should be offset by cooling preparations such as steamed fish or stir fried vegetables. A little bit of Yin and Yang occurs and equal attention should be paid for the balance of the food’s taste, texture, size, shape and aroma.

We had previously noticed how much oil was used in Chinese cooking, but on this particular course there wasn’t quite so much oil used and the dishes were very tastey and true to the Guangxi region. Not all Chinese food is the same, as we travelled from region to region we experienced subtle and strong differences in the presentation, spice, and taste.

There were around 10 of us in the class with a good mixture of young and old, and vegetarians were catered for equally. All in all we learned a lot about the values of Chinese cooking as well as picked up on some new and exciting recipes, which we think we could cook when we’re back in our own kitchen again.

Below are a few of those recipes! We hope you enjoy! Please do let us know if you manage to cook any!

Steamed Stuffed Vegetables

50gms minced pork / use finely chopped firm tofu for vegetarian option
1 tablespoon of Chives – chopped
One quarter teaspoon of salt
Mixed vegetables – peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, courgette,

Mix the mince/tofu, salt and chives together. Stuff vegetables and steam for 15 minutes in a steaming basket. (Can use boiling water in a pan with an oven proof glass bowl instead and place vegetables in the bowl and then cover)

This dish is great as a starter and would be good at a barbeque or for a little tray of canapes!

Beer Fish

100gms fish (firm white with skin on)
2 tablespoons of peanut oil
Half tomatoe – chopped
Half green, half red pepper – sliced
1 tablespoon of sliced garlic tops or spring onions
1 tablespoon ginger – sliced
2 cloves of garlic – crushed
1 tablespoon of soy saice
Half teaspoon salt
Half glass of beer

Heat the wok, add oil and leave on full heat. Turn down the heat, put fish into work skin down, add salt on top of fish. Fry on each side for about 3 minutes making sure skin is brown. Put all veges, garlic and ginger on top of fish. Pour on soy sauce and beer. Cover with lid and cooking for 5 minutes. Remove lid add spring onions, reduce liquid for 2 minutes. Serve.

This is a really tastey dish indeed!! It’s so easy but we found it’s all about timing, adding the ingredients at the right time. A useful hint on the crushing of garlic – all we did was smash it with a large flat knife and that was that – no extra chopping required.

Eggplant Yangshou Style

100gm eggplant
2 tablesppons of peanut oil
Half red pepper – sliced
One quarter teaspoon of ginger – sliced
2 cloves of garlic – crushed
2 spring onions – sliced
Quarter teaspoon of salt
One teaspoon soy sauce
Half teaspoon oyster sauce

Heat wok and add oil. Heat until oil is smoking and then add eggplant and fry until browned and cooked. Move eggplant to side of wok, reduce heat and fry garlic, ginger and pepper for one minute. Mix eggplant with vegetbales, salt, soy sauce and oyester sauce. Add spring onions. Serve.

All of these dishes are for 2 persons, so double your quantities if you’re cooking for 4!

We’ve opted for some sightseeing and thrown ourselves headfirst into the height of Beijing’s tourist center; The Forbidden City. Helen came here many years ago on a hot summers day. On this day the sun shone and the sky was blue, but it was very cold. Along with panda hat wearing locals, westerners and street vendors we approached the Forbidden City through the front gates passing under Mao’s portrait and through to the grounds. It’s a massive site built up of several temples, shrines, gardens, halls and statues that were home to the Qing and Ming dynasties many moons ago. It’s a must do in the whole scale of things to do when you visit China. However Dave was expecting a little more!! It is quite tired and the money coming in from the thousands of visitors every day doesn’t appear to be going into the upkeep of the site. However given this it’s still very impressive and is also host to a 4 star toilet facility! Well surely this is enough to go on it’s own merit!!

You can easily spend a day here as there are so many routes within the city, gardens and museums to explore. We opted for a long morning. The colours of the brickwork and walls within the Forbidden City are beautiful and we loved the textures that exist within this environment. Later that evening we ate at The Korean Bistro on Nanluoguxiang, a tourist Hutong area that has a mixture of western and Chinese food, gift shops and bars.

The following day we went on our first of two trips booked with the CCC. This one was for the Great Wall of China and we were going to an area of the wall that isn’t walked often, has no tourist traps and was around an hour and a half away from the city. It was lovely to get out of the city and the weather was again perfect from a photography point of view, although it was bitterly cold in the wind. Our local tour guide is from the village where we started the walk and he along with others from his family had helped to re-build parts of the wall so that people can hike in the area. He had even carried a table to a watch-mans tower so that we could stop there for lunch. We had a lovely group including Trisha and her two children from Portland, Joyce from NYC and Becca from England, our tour guide from the CCC Andy spoke excellent English and had great knowledge about the hike. Both he and the tour co-ordinator Michael were very dedicated in carrying hot water, coffee and snacks all the way. As you can see by the photographs the scenery is quite mystical with a very hazy layer on the horizon. We really enjoyed the walk and were breathtaken by the Great Wall itself.

As we got back down we were invited into the home of our local tour guide. We sat in their living room drinking tea and chatting away, it was a lovely finish to a great walk. When we got back to the CCC we were invited back to Joyce’s for beer and popcorn, Dave, Becca and myself took her up on the offer and before long we were sat in her serviced apartment in Sanlitun. We discovered Joyce is an author of 30+ books!! This is someone who has sheer dedication and is an inspiration to us all. We met up with Trisha minus the kids and went to a very local chinese fast food restaurant for noodles and chinese burgers. We ended the night with a hot chocolate at The Bookworm.

On sunday we went to a charity Christmas gift event at the Canadian International School of Beijing, we bought a few Christmas gifts and soon found ourselves back at The Bookworm using their free wi-fi. This was followed by a spot of shopping before we made our way back to the CCC for their noodle and dumpling making class. This was taught to us by a local professional Chinese chef who specialises in Chinese pastry. We made our dough for the dumplings, left it to rise and in the meantime we had a go at stretching and pulling the dough used for noodle making. This was loads of fun and many people ended up with theirs on the floor as the dough stretched too far. There is a real knack to this and it does take many years to perfect so one lesson wont do much!! For the dumplings there was a meat and veggie option for the filling. The meat is pork and vegetable and the veggie option is egg and spinach. We rolled out our dough, chopped it, flattened it out and then filled it with a little of the stuffing. After this you close the dough in and around the mixture and then make a nice pattern with the dough. We hope that the photos describe it better. Once they were ready they were boiled and then we ate them with a soy dip. They were okay! I’m sure next time they’ll be loads better!! Only a few people got to make the actual noodles but we didn’t cook them so it was more of a demonstration. It was a pretty cool little event, although it would be good to learn how to make the mixture ourselves rather than having it ready to go. We also met Jen from Tinyurbankitchen who is traveling with her husband and writing a food blog.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)