Sustainability has becoming a much larger global conversation, and we’ve been thoughtful about how to be more friendly to the environment in our cooking classes, reduce waste, and encourage others to do the same. Bangkok’s International Schools have also been a part of pushing discourse and action to protect the environment, and we’re proud to be in partnership with schools encouraging students to make a difference. Most recently we have been doing workshops and demos in schools to teach youth practical ways they can reduce waste in and around the kitchen.
Thailand is one of the world’s worst plastic polluting countries, creating about 2 million tons of plastic and growing each year. The single-use plastic is especially egregious and has been the focus of many of the awareness campaigns in the past few years. This has been encouraging people to use last plastic, especially plastic bags, straws and other utensils, and even hygiene items such as toothbrushes.
Cooling butterfly pea juice served with a natural morning glory straw in our cooking classes.
When we have an opportunity to do outreach with students, generating discussion is usually our first task. The majority of students we meet in international schools have already seen the viral videos of animals suffering or dead from swallowing too much plastic. In fact some of the current initiatives to influence retailers to use less plastic, have been started by the students themselves. This makes getting students to speak up about how to make changes easy.
Just like the students, we can all acknowledge we need to use less plastic, but can’t always imagine what that may mean. We have to remind students that plastic, as much as it’s a regular part of life today, wasn’t always around. What then, did people do before they were given 3 straws and two plastic bags for every drink purchase they make? We believe that asking these questions can provoke students to realize that many of the solutions they desire may already be in hand.
Using Natural Straws
One fun way to get the discussion going is to make natural straws with the students. To their shock, we grab what seems like an unimportant vase of long stemmed light green plants, and assign them to make their own straws. The plant is morning glory and the students set up cutting, pithing, and cleaning them, while discussing how they’ll use them at lunch later in the day.
Students at St. Andrews International School in Bangkok make banana leaf bowls for salad, and their own morning glory straws.
We find most students know very little about the morning glory plant, whose name in English can be used to refer to a large family of plants. In Thailand however, most discussion revolves around two edible varieties used commonly in Thai cooking. The most famous is referred to as a Chinese breed (pak boong jin or ผักบุ้งจีน), and is flash stir fried with chili and garlic. This version has skinny stems, and if you purchase it, intending to make a natural straw you will be sorely disappointed. Or maybe not, because you can still make a stellar stir fry.
Long stemmed Thai morning glory (ผักบุ้งไทย) is edible, and makes a great natural straw.
The other common variety (pak boong thai or ผักบุ้งไทย) is native to Thailand and grows much larger. Since the stems are mostly hollow on the inside, the plant can float on the water above competing species. However, the strong stems can also make the plant less desirable to eat, so this version doesn’t yet enjoy the culinary popularity of its Chinese counterpart. While tasty, the dishes you would make with this quick growing water vegetable, for example gaeng taepo (แกงเทโพ), are seldom well known by people outside of Thailand. This is because the local variety of morning glory is more likely to be cooked at home than in a restaurant.
Already the students, who are a mix of Thai and expat kids, have learned more about this native ingredient, and especially how to use it to reduce plastic waste. The plant is plentiful in the region and easy to grow. We can imagine the surprise of Thai farmers, if suddenly this ‘water weed’ becomes as valuable as other vegetables. The key is to remind the students that there are some drawbacks to using natural ingredients. The most important issue to be weary, is the ability of the plant to spread disease when not washed or cooked properly.
Cooking Thai food with natural banana leaf table and plate coverings.
Making Banana Leaf Bowls
Thais still recognize the value of the banana leaf. You can find everything from steamed seafood, to sweet snacks being wrapped in banana in strong, sturdy banana leaves for cooking. Chefs who want to give their dish a more natural look, may even use a banana leaf at the bottom of their plate to improve aesthetics. However, the banana leaf has slipped somewhat in importance due to the cheap price and ease of use of plastics and styrofoam. We think the time has come to remind everyone how spectacular these large leaves can be for culinary purposes.
Once you have your hands on some banana leaves, it’s important to know Thai cooks will toast them, before using them with food. This can be done by quickly holding the leaf over fire, or dipping them a few seconds in boiling water. This helps with the hygiene of the leaf, but is also widely down to improve the strength of the leaf, making it tear less easily. Dry and cool the leaves, and they’re ready to be manipulated into all sorts of shapes. Toothpicks can be used to hold them together, but if you’re new to banana leaf origami, you may want to start by simply stapling the leaf to help it hold shape.
A student makes a coconut snack while his friends prepare bowls made from banana leaves.
Cutting the banana leaves into spheres and putting them on plates alone, can help us reduce water usage and how much work needs to be done to wash the dishes. This is really big selling point with teenagers, and we use their sudden enthusiasm to pivot into making a snack together. The snack of choice is Thai crispy cup, filled with a mildly spicy chicken salad (with younger students we will make a Thai coconut pancake with the kids). The students mix their salad to their liking, some adding more fish sauce and palm sugar than recipe really requires. We don’t scold them much, we’re thankful they’re walking away excited about their banana leaf bowls, morning glory straws, and the tasty snack they learned to make.
This snack is pronounced kra-tong-tong (กระทงทอง) and is a crispy edible cup we can fill with a variety of ingredients.
We all have a role to play in caring for the environment and caring for people in need. Sharing this mission with kids, whether in slums or Bangkok’s fancy international schools, has been rewarding for our Courageous Kitchen team. To take our commitment to the next level this year, we’re on path to become Bangkok’s first plastic free cooking class, and hope to more cooking demos with students around the city.
Thank you for your support, and hold on to your aprons, we’ve got more to say about sustainability and making a difference in Thailand. If you have other tips for being sustainable in the kitchen please leave a comment below!
Exciting news! We’ve been featured in a local online magazine called The Cloud. The publication is in Thai, and includes some great photography, but we wanted to share more about the phenomenal weekend they visited, for supporters who may not read Thai. If you do, you can read the full article about Courageous Kitchen on The Cloud’s website, and help us by sharing with more Thai friends.
Typically when we have an opportunity to work with refugee kids from the communities we serve, it’s only for a few hours at a time. However, during the children’s school break, there’s more flexibility for us to host longer activities, such as our cooking camps. The camps give us a chance to work more closely with each of the students, and teach a wider range of subjects to the kids.
The day the team from The Cloud visited was the last day of our May cooking camp. In this cooking camp we worked with students who had much weaker English skills than the students who participated in the previous camp. If you remember the last cooking camp, in addition to fun Thai dishes, we also had everyone excited about the burgers and pizza we made too. However in the May camp, instead of fully focusing on cooking, our students were doing everything from fancy hat making, to an impossible human knot challenge, and learning to edit their own videos.
One young student begins an assignment to illustrate her community, starting to fill her empty canvas with green first.
The students were tasked with creating a hat that represents their personality.
The youngest participants had a little extra help from our volunteer teachers, so their hats came out extra colorful and playful.
The subjects we choose for each camp depend on the ability of the students, and the interest of the participating volunteers. To be better suited for students with weaker English, our last batch of volunteer teachers helped run art therapy exercises, team building sessions, and challenged the students to use the English they’ve learned to make their own recipe videos.
The finale day saw the students putting the finishing touches on each group’s recipe video. While some students filmed and helped behind the scenes, others were challenged to stand in front of the camera and explain the recipes they were making in English. To keep the video editing from being too complicated, the students were assigned to simply explain how to make an herbal tea drink recipe. They made drinks from popular Thai ingredients like butterfly pea, chrysanthemum, and bael fruit, while managing to narrate and film at the same time.
CK students focused on creating their recipe videos, each with duties both on screen and off.
The students learned to use ipads to film, and the software imovie to edit their videos together for the final presentation.
Of course we had to take a break and cook lunch as well. The finale meal was a celebratory plate of banh xeo, a sort of Vietnamese crepe. For this cooking feat, we made an assembly line of students cooking pork belly and spring onion to use as filling for their crepes. Once everything was hot and smelling nice, they moved further along the station with their filling to make their crepe. The action of swirling the thin batter of turmeric tinted rice flour in the light weight, non-stick pans was exciting for everyone.
The challenge, however, was to get the crepe out of the pan without the fragile exterior fracturing into many pieces. While it was easier for some of the smaller students to fold the crepe in the pan, lifting it on to their plates, there’s a better way. The best technique to finish with a beautiful plate of banh xeo, is to dump the entire crepe out on your plate, folding it together as it falls, with a quick motion of the pan. Sound tricky? This is definitely a move inspired by the quick hands of the street food vendors we frequent!
A closeup of the banh xeo cooking in a pan, after the pork belly filling has been added.
The banh xeo is plated by dumping the entire crepe onto a plate and folding with a quick motion of the pan.
After lunch, we gathered all the students to celebrate their accomplishments and watch their final videos. The students giggled with glee (and some horror) seeing their faces on the big screen. We discussed being brave in front of the camera, and being more conscious of lighting and sound when video making. Finally, everyone shared their biggest challenges and successes from the cooking camp before we said goodbye.
Our entire team had a great time this cooking camp and want to thank everyone who helped donate to sponsor this activity. Getting the students to be proud of their art, video production, and especially their culinary creations can be especially challenging with students overcoming trauma and fear they’ve accumulated over the years. However, this mission wasn’t in vain, and the wonderful article in The Cloud, and all the fun photos from the camp are a testament of what can be accomplished when we really believe courage is contagious.
Wherever you are reading from, and whatever you’re going through — be courageous!
Anyone who’s set foot in South East Asia the past few weeks has learned the hard way, just how hot this part of the world gets this time of year. Whether ducking into well air conditioned mega malls, or seeking refuge in one of Bangkok’s innumerable 7-Eleven shops, everyone has a strategy or two for heat relief. In today’s shared plate we want to make sure you’re on the lookout for one dessert that has been helping keep both chili scorched tongues, and sweat soaked bodies cool, long before the arrival of ice cream.
A Courageous Kitchen student excited for his chance to cook a traditional Thai dessert.
As a planet we’re experiencing unusually hot temperatures this year. Fortunately Thais have been coming up with inventive ways to deal with intense heat for ages. Long before refrigeration was democratized and ice cream was everywhere, shaved ice ruled hearts and minds in the Kingdom of Thailand with few challengers. When the air gets heavy and the heat seems unbearable, this is the dessert Thais seek out in Bangkok’s food filled streets.
Among street markets in Bangkok, a vendor serving shaved ice may feature anywhere from ten to thirty ingredients for guests to choose from. The variety of ingredients on display is your first clue that shaved ice desserts (called nam kaeng sai in Thai or น้ำแข็งใส) isn’t a singular dessert, but an entire experience. When you arrive at such a shop, you typically choose a few ingredients, and whether you’d prefer to have them served in pandan syrup or sweetened coconut milk. The ingredients usually include fresh fruit, candied fruit, jellies, rice noodles, and an odd selection of beans, peas, sweet corn, and millet. You can throw a mix of them all into your custom made bowl, or you can have a pre-set mix using ingredients popular enough to stand alone.
Students quickly prepping their water chestnuts and tossing them around like pros.
All of the ‘rubies’ are colored naturally with beetroot for red, butterfly pea flower for blue, and pandan leaf to give you a natural green glow.
Tup tim grob (ทับทิมกรอบ), translated directly as red rubies, is one of those ingredients popular enough to stand on its own. In street side stalls, this bright pink colored water chestnut is often one of the first sell out. The snack is made by taking water chestnuts, covering them in flour (most commonly tapioca or arrowroot starch) and boiling them. Their bright pink color is borrowed typically from an artificially colored red syrup, and the boiled flour layer gives the chestnuts a soft, shiny sheen resembling a hand full of jewels.
The most recent guest to be won over by tup tim krob was the EU Ambassador to Thailand, Pirkka Tapiola. On a very hot day Ambassador Tapiola arrived with his staff and family in tow, for a fun day of visiting the market and cooking with our Courageous Kitchen students.
We also taught the ambassador and friends to make fried spring rolls, pad see ew (if you saw our last shared plate post, you know we’re huge fans of these Thai noodles), but the crowd pleaser was hands down the multicolored and multi-textured tup tim krob. We prefer to make the dessert with natural coloring, using beetroot, butterfly pea, and pandan to make several eye catching colors. Then for good measure guests could add fresh cantaloupe, watermelon, and lemon basil seeds. The lemon basil seeds are particularly interesting, because they’re eye catching and when soaked, develop a texture similar to chia.
Ambassador Tapiola empties his wok full of steamy pad see ew noodles.
Ambassador Tapiola and his wife work with students on coating the water chestnuts with flour.
Nowadays there’d no doubt that ice cream shops are the heat stroke prevention centers of choice for many dessert lovers. Still, however, the allure of this simple sweet remains in Thailand, and should be sought out while you’re visiting. With fewer shops remaining in business, you may find it packed with locals clamoring for a bowl nostalgia that the red gems bring.
This bowl of tuptim krob is ready to enjoy on a hot day!
Happy snacking, and don’t forget to share this bowl of gems with someone new!
If you’re interested in more edible relief from the summer heat, leave us some feedback below and stay tuned. For those travelers and foodies passing through, we look forward to making this Thai dessert with you in our cooking class in Bangkok.
Special Thanks to the EU Embassy, and all of their staff for making a special visit to Courageous Kitchen!
Today’s shared plate is fresh out of the wok, and we’re ready to enjoy it with the latest episode of The Bangkok Podcast! Feast your eyes on our beloved pad see ew, and listen to the podcast on spotify or youtube. This drunken noodle dish from Thailand is often featured in our morning market cooking class, but today we wanted to share a version with a slight twist.
This isn’t just any pad see ew, it’s made with a little extra TLC, by taking the time to make our own rice noodles. For those who love pad see ew, you can probably imagine why this is special. Pad see ew is normally a milder Thai dish, but if you prefer the noodles a little spicy, you can dash a bit of our homemade sriracha on top (or alternatively you can make pad kee mow drunken noodles instead). Beyond a spicy sriracha sauce, we’re pairing this special plate of noodles with an episode of The Bangkok Podcast, whose hosts Greg and Ed, decided to feature Courageous Kitchen. We hope you will take the time to listen and share!
After a lot of testing, we’re finally ready to teach you how to make fresh rice noodles.
Homemade ‘Sen Yai’ Rice Noodles
The process has been tricky, but we have been testing recipes to create our own wide rice noodle on our own. One of the factors that makes pad see ew in Thailand, more outstanding than versions you can have in restaurants abroad, is that street vendors in Thailand can usually grab fresh rice noodles from the market. The noodles are factory made in giant batches each day, and delivered to the markets where a local vendor can purchase them, and slice them to the thickness that customers dictate. Best of all, you can buy a kilo of fresh rice noodles for much less than a dollar.
Getting the noodles the proper thickness and texture is a challenge, and sometimes a matter of personal preference.
The local market version is sliced precisely, and dirt cheap, so why would you make your own?
We simply love the nuance of hand cut noodles and the ability to customize them to your preference. If you prefer them melty, bouncy, super long, or some combination of those characteristics, you can adjust the amount of rice flour and a tapioca starch you add into the recipe. In a city that thrives on street food, this is a lost art in most Bangkok homes, but we’re happy to guide you through the process of making your own rice noodles.
As we make our stir fry sauce for pad see ew, we add a little color to our hand cut noodles with a teaspoon of black soy sauce.
You can find the dish made with other types of noodles, but there’s something special about freshly made, wide rice noodles or ‘sen yai’. The texture is extremely soft and pliable, unlike most of the dried, pre-packaged noodles you find in Thailand’s supermarkets. Admittedly though, they can be a pain to cook. The noodles tend to get so gooey in a hot wok, that if you’re not quick enough when stirring, they begin to melt and glue the entire dish to the bottom of the wok.
Many cooks, especially Thailand’s beloved street chefs, solve this problem by cooking the noodles quickly with high heat. When you spot vendors doing this, you’re really peering into the impact of centuries of Chinese migration on Thailand’s food culture. When the pad see ew noodles pour out of those high pressure gas or charcoal heated woks, the entire dish has absorbed the smoke and the stir fry sauce has been charred through the lightning quick process. This is the same wok hei style cooking that gives us dishes like Malaysia’s ‘char kway teeo‘, a sibling dish which Malaysians love as much as Thais adore pad see ew.
A delicious, hot plate of pad see ew with homemade rice noodles.
We’ve just launched a new class to teach you to make these noodles, please check it out! We hope guests will have fun going a little deeper with their pad see ew, and take noodle making knowledge home to places where good rice noodles for pad see ew and other dishes are a rarity. As in the podcast, we also hope to share Courageous Kitchen’s message of how food has the power to transform communities with everyone who visits for this tasty meal.
Happy listening, and thanks for stopping by to snack with us.
Special thanks to The Bangkok Podcast. If you have any trouble listening, you can also find them on youtube. We recommend listening to their latest episodes with a sharing plate nearby!
Today’s shared plate is a piping hot bowl of mushroom soup known by locals as ‘gaeng hed‘. The soup’s popularity pales in comparison to Thai cuisine’s soup juggernauts such as tom yam, and tom kha soups. However, despite not having as strong a reputation, we believe this enchanting green soup too, will leave newcomers craving a second taste.
Dwight leads special guests from the US Embassy to shop for herbs in the local market.
The soup isn’t only great tasting, with a sneakily slow and building brand of spiciness, but gaeng hed is also good for you. Contrary to popular belief, the soup base isn’t tinted green from the mix of herbs and mushrooms added, but is given its color by blending together ‘yanang‘ leaves (ใบย่านาง).
Unfortunately, there isn’t a great name for yanang in English. The scientific name is tiliacora triandra, and it’s popular with older folks in the countryside, especially the area called ‘issan‘ that borders Laos. Wise in their years, they will often drink the grassy tasting herb as a juice, to most quickly benefit from yanang’s anti-inflamatory, anti-cancer, and pain relieving properties.
All of the herbs and vegetables used commonly in gaeng hed curries or soups.
Closeup of the yanang (tilicoria triandra) leaf that gives gaeng hed it’s deep green color and medicinal properties.
When you factor in the benefits from the fresh acacia herb (cha om or ใบชะอม), sweet Thai pumpkin, and a flurry of mushrooms, you’d be hard pressed to find a healthier Thai soup. The health benefits from the acacia alone, a common ingredient in gaeng hed, include antioxidant properties, a source of vitamin A, and helping to regulate body temperature.
These amazing herbal properties and their Lao-issan origin, made the dish our choice to cook for US Embassy guests, including Dr. Joanne Hyppolite, curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Both the dish, and the often appropriated Lao-issan cuisine in general share some commonalities, and ingredients with African American soul food. This ranges from the darker skin, socio-economically disadvantaged people of the region, to gaeng hed’s culinary versatility allowing it to be easily supplemented with herbs and vegetables you may have on hand.
A small handful of delicate acacia leaves (ใบชะอม or the scientific name Senegalia pennata or climbing wattle).
Most interestingly is the texture of the soup. Named as a ‘gaeng’ in Thai, which implies a curry or curry-like, thick consistency, however, this is a bit of a misnomer. Instead gaeng hed is eaten as more of a thickened soup, with many recipes calling for the addition of tapioca starch. The starch, used similarly to how many people use corn starch, gives the soup a consistency that is similar in mouthfeel to the natural thickener of African American cooks in generations past, okra.
Dr. Hyppolite gives Courageous Kitchen a gift from NMAAHC, the Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook.
Although not commonly included in this soup, Thais too love their okra. The young soft okra (aka ladyfingers, kra jiap, or กระเจี๊ยบ) fruits are steamed or eaten raw as an accompaniment to traditional Thai chili pastes. Fortunately, Courageous Kitchen has 3 six-foot okra trees which produce fruit every 2-3 days. This made it easy to grab a few from the garden and quickly slice them for our guests from the US Embassy.
Gaeng hed may be a little known dish outside of Thailand, but it certainly brought two seemingly disparate food histories together at Courageous Kitchen recently. We’re all about using food to start discussions, break down barriers between people, and heal ourselves. We hope you’ll be intrigued to find out more about this healing soup and the spice and herbs that make it special. Happy eating, please share this plate with someone!
If you’re curious about Thai food, especially any of the ingredients mentioned in this article, be sure to let us know to include them in your cooking class or street food tour with us in Bangkok.
