It was around May or June in 2002 when I met Paul and Jutima Dallaghan in Mysore - they are yoga teachers who certify other yoga students as teachers and have studied under Pattabhi Jois, THE Ashtanga yoga guru based in Mysore who just passed away a few days ago.
They were conducting a month long program in Nov of that year and invited me to join as Manager / Liaison person / Nutritionist / Chef [Indian food]. That meant one month and a few days on Koh Samui, an exotic island off the eastern coast of Thailand. Well of course I jumped at the opportunity - looking back, it was a huge leap of faith at the time, but I trusted them and knew I could handle whatever the job required.
So in October my mom and I took off for Bangkok where we spent 3 memorable days shopping and sight seeing and then flew to Koh Samui. She had a day's taste of the exotic island and then flew back home. The program was hosted by a medium scale beach front resort on the island.
Handling my many responsibilities was a huge challenge for me and I wouldn't say I was perfect in discharging my duties - but it was a huge learning experience for me - I did a variety of things :
I was a practice student for the teacher trainees and as a result, learnt the basics of Ashtanga yoga. I don't practice today - but I put on weight and developed muscles I never knew I had [my mom had given up hope as I looked to be scrawny for the rest of my life]. The yoga just left me with so much energy and feeling cleansed.
I taught the kitchen staff how to make rasam and sambar [South Indian lentil soups]. Jutima was very specific about wanting these dishes made regularly as they are Saatvic [food that balances all the systems in the body according to Ayurveda]. So I spent time every day in the kitchen overseeing the whole process and adding the curry powders [which I carried with me from India]. I messed up so many times but finally got the hang of it. I learnt a lot about quantity cooking from this experience.
Jutima asked me if we could serve chapatis for lunch one day and I remember hunting around the island for whole wheat flour. I finally found it at this bakery owned by a lovely lady named 'Oh' - I still have a picture of her - quite an entrepreneur. So, I made chapatis for everyone and considering there were 18 students plus us, for the final week of the program, I spent 2 hours in the kitchen just making chapatis. Training the staff [who didn't know more than 10 words of English] how to make them was so much fun with so many mistakes made and a lot of 'world maps' coming out of it, ultimately they learnt and were able to support me.
Towards the end of my stay there - I held a chapati -making class for all the women in the group - well you know what happens when a bunch of women cook together - we have a lot of fun and we bond. I stayed in touch with them for a few years after we parted ways and even met several of them again when they visited India but we've lost touch now. I wonder how they all are.
Towards the end of my stay there - I held a chapati -making class for all the women in the group - well you know what happens when a bunch of women cook together - we have a lot of fun and we bond. I stayed in touch with them for a few years after we parted ways and even met several of them again when they visited India but we've lost touch now. I wonder how they all are.
I became friends with the entire cooking staff and learnt A LOT about Thai cooking and it's from this point I became a huge fan of Thai food. I love making red, green and yellow curry at home. My big regret is I don't get the original Thai ingredients like galangal, Thai basil, lemon grass, etc where I live. Tofu is available though and I use it as often as possible.
I learnt the Thai names of many of the common ingredients there. I forgot to mention earlier that since it was a yoga camp - it needed to be completely saatvik vegetarian - impossible? No - all that it needed was to work constantly with the chefs and make sure they didn't even use seafood, egg and fish/oyster sauce [for some reason, they thought these were vegetarian]. So "MAI NAAM PLAH" [no fish sauce] is a big part of my Thai vocabulary.
OK OK - I could go on and on about my experiences in Thailand but for now - I'll leave you with my recipe for Massaman Curry.
Massaman Curry [a spicy Thai dish]
Massaman Curry [a spicy Thai dish]
For the curry paste:
10 dried red chillies
Rind of 1 lemon [grated, used as a substitute for lemon grass] or 1 stalk of lemon grass [edible portion]
2 medium sized onions – chopped
6 flakes of garlic
4 tsp chopped ginger
2 tbsp cumin seeds [jeera]
2 tsp saunf
2” stick cinnamon [dalchini]
seeds of 4 cardamoms
4 cloves
8 peppercorns
4 tsp coriander seeds
¼ tsp grated nutmeg [jaiphal]
Method: Roast all the ingredients in a wok for 5 mins or till aromatic.Grind all the roasted ingredients together with 4 tbsp water. Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for upto a week.
Ingredients for the curry:
6 – 7 tbsp Masaman curry paste.
100 g babycorn
200 g broccoli florets
100 g capsicum
100 g zucchini
3 tsp oil [preferably groundnut]
2 cup thick coconut milk
1 tbsp chopped lemon grass or rind of 1 lemon
2 tbsp Tamarind juice / lemon juice
1” cinnamon stick
1 medium sized onion – chopped
½ tsp turmeric [haldi] powder
50 g roasted peanuts – crushed
2 tbsp coriander leaves
You can prepare this as a side dish along with plain steamed rice noodles or even serve with chapatis [fabulous]. Its goes well with rice too. The preparation takes an hour and cooking - 25 mins. I thought I wouldn’t be able to replicate the authentic Thai flavour until I found Nita Mehta’s vegetarian Thai cook book which has kind of become my bible for Thai cooking. My taste buds are singing nowadays.
