Jakeb has a friend whose mom is from Thailand. We have met up with them on occasion at school functions and really enjoy visiting with them every time we see them. Sometime last month, Jakeb went to his friend’s house after school and his mom cooked them a Thai feast! Jakeb came home raving about it and I knew I had to learn to cook some of those dishes.

I sms’d (texted) Paunnee to tell her thank you for feeding my kid and how much he enjoyed her food. She replied and basically said, come over and I’ll teach you how. umm…. OK!! We set a date and decided on our menu, I politely asked, I really begged, her to teach me to make green curry chicken and mango sticky rice. Generally speaking, Thai food is very spicy and it’s not something I can usually eat in restaurants here. Many of the sauces are premade with LOTS of red and green chile’s. LOTS! No joke. I got green curry chicken from a Thai restaurant the other day for lunch “takeaway”  and told them “less less spicy” and looked them straight in the eye so I knew they heard me. They even chuckled and repeated “less less spicy”. I got it down with three glasses of water. :) If I can learn how to cook the dishes we love, I can make them less less spicy and often much healthier. Most of the time we eat Asian food out I end up with four ankles from all the salt or msg or whatever they use.

Back to the good stuff…

Last Friday I arrived at her place at 4pm and we were on our feet for hours. A new friend, Yukari, joined us and we cleaned prawn (shrimp), cut veggies and milked coconut. I learned how to peel, vein and de-head prawn from the MASTER. She did about 10 to my 1 but at least I know how. She got freshly grated coconut from the market and taught me how to milk it. The first milk is called the “head” which we split up for the green curry chicken, tom yum and sticky rice. There were veggies she used that I had never seen or heard of. She had big juicy limes with no seeds! I took pictures of every ingredient and every dish so I could print them out and take them to the market with me. After we finished cooking, our families joined around their table and shared the meal. We had Texan, Thai, UK and Japanese together. It was one of my favorite moments to date. I’ve had so many favorite moments but I love to cook and I love to learn new recipes especially ones from other cultures. We can now say that “this” dish came from our friends in Singapore and we’ll forever sit down and fill our bellies with a full heart. 

Here was our menu:

Green Curry Chicken
Tom Yum Soup with Prawn
Rice, of course
Noodles
Stir fried vegetables with noodles
Beef Salad (or Lemon Beef, which is really made with lime)
Mango Sticky Rice for dessert

And photos:

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