If you’ve taken one of a cooking classes since we began our small social enterprise in Bangkok, you will have no doubt met Alina. She’s the friendly young cooking trainee who has worked her way into becoming our main instructor. If you’re a fan of our version of pad thai, Thai basil, or other popular recipes, she is likely the one to blame! She works hard before guests arrive: researching new recipes, practicing her English, and even hand makes her own chili pastes, in a traditional mortar and pestle.
Alina is originally from a small village a few hours outside Hanoi, where her family asked her to quit school and help more on the farm. She had never been to Hanoi or another big city until 2012 when her family fled persecution on foot to Thailand. Currently residing in Bangkok, Alina speaks 4 different languages: Hmong, Vietnamese, Thai, and English. Despite lack of access to education, the kidnapping of her older sister (believed to be trafficked to China), and her harrowing journey to Bangkok, Alina is a model of strength and perseverance in her community. She aspires to be a role model to other Hmong girls, especially her younger nieces, and in the future, she hopes to have the opportunity to study more and one day own her own restaurant.
Now you have the opportunity to hear from this rising star firsthand during her upcoming interview with Hmong Women Today!
When: Friday, April 20th, 10am (Bangkok Time) When: Thursday, April 19th, 8pm Pacific/11pm Eastern Where: Hmong Women Today FB Page How: The interview will be broadcast on the Hmong Women Today facebook page. Go there to watch the interview and leave a comment of encouragement for Alina.
Who are the Hmong people?
The Hmong are a minority hill tribe group originally from Southern China, but migrated further south into the mountains of South East Asia. Hmong inhabited the mountainous areas of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, they were trained by the CIA to help with guerrilla warfare and the US’s ‘Secret War in Laos’. After the Americans lost the war, many of the Hmong fled Laos and Vietnam to refugee camps in Thailand. Many of them were resettled to the US, but the group is still a fairly large minority group in South East Asia, where they struggle with issues such as land rights, religious persecution, and human trafficking.
What is Hmong Women Today?
Hmong Women Today is a community for promoting and empowering Hmong women based in the US. The organization actively uses their website, facebook page, and local events to engage Hmong women about the issues they are facing, while sharing stories of women who have triumphed as they met challenges themselves. More info is available on the Hmong Women Today website.
Note: Don’t worry, if you miss this live broadcast, the video will still be available for watching after the event.
For all of our guests joining in on our Bangkok classes this coming April, we’re proud to announce a special menu!
Songkran is one of Thailand’s most famous holidays, especially for locals. When the heat of the Thai summer is in full swing, people come out to celebrate Thai New Year and the harvest season with great food, drink, and giant water fights! The holiday lasts for several days, so during this time people usually make the migration back to their hometowns in the provinces to be with family. If you’re visiting Bangkok, during this time we’d also like for you to get a taste of the Songkran celebration.
The Songkran in the Countryside menu is as follows:
Soothing Jungle Soup with Pumpkin and Mushroom
Papaya Salad Sans Papaya with Traditional Herbal Thai Whisky Tasting (optional)
Choice of Glazed Pork Neck or Banana Leaf Steamed Fish with Fresh ‘Jaew’ Dipping Sauce
Dok Jok Lotus Cookies and Ice Cream topped with Crispy Mung Beans
Fresh Fruit from the Local Market
The festival with origins in India aims to celebrate the harvest season and inaugurate the start of the rainy season. Traditionally this is an extremely important time for people around the country, especially in the rural Northeast. Issan, pronounced ‘e-san’, Thailand’s poorest region is often where people forsake village life to earn money living and working in Bangkok. The five course menu pays homage to the people of the Northeast, while giving you a chance to experience a taste of these special provincial dishes. This experience is especially recommended for people who may already be familiar with the typical Thai dishes you see repeated daily in the average cooking classes in Bangkok. That means if you want to go deeper than pad thai and green curry, this is the perfect time of year to try cooking some new dishes with us!
Read These FAQs to Be Prepared for Songkran
When is the 2018 Songkran Festival happening? Friday, April 13th – Monday, April 16th in most places. However, some cities may have their own dates.
Should I be prepared to get wet and splashed by strangers? Yes. When we visit the market in the morning, many of the market goers, people in the street, and even cars going by may be splashing water.
What items should I bring with me? We keep towels available, but you may want to bring along dry clothing if you’d like to change after visiting the market. We have a dry bag where you can safely keep your cell phone or other important small items. If you have a water gun, bring it! Most importantly bring a sense of adventure and your appetite and it should be a fun, festive, and wet time for everyone involved.
Is Songkran a safe holiday? Motor accidents, especially due to drunk driving make Songkran a dangerous holiday. You should avoid riding motorbikes, and wear your seatbelt when traveling. If joining large events happening in Bangkok, avoid taking valuables to prevent petty thefts and them getting ruined by water. We hope you come and enjoy Songkran without incident, but consider it our responsibility to inform of some dangers associated with the festival.
Should I book in advance? For the best experience, we do recommend booking in advance. Since we prefer to do small classes, the spaces can fill up quickly. If our morning 10am class is full, we may give you the option to come during our 2pm session. We will also be running our evening kids dinner and demo classes during this period.
Can I request a different menu? If you would like to cook more classic Thai dishes, hilltribe or other menu theme, please let us know in advance and we’ll try to adjust accordingly. Please message us with other special requests, but due to the amount of interest during this time of year, we may not be able to honor every request.
Riding on the tail end of International Women’s Day, we wanted to feature one of our favorite female Chefs and friend of Courageous Kitchen, Seng Luangrath. Chef Seng is two-time James Beard nominee, and Owner of Thip Khao and Padaek the first and two of the most popular Lao restaurants in Washington DC.
However, before she was internationally acclaimed, Chef Seng was born in Laos and spent a few of her childhood years in a Thai refugee camp where she lived and watched in awe as the residents around her cooked traditional Lao food with only the simplest ingredients. Her family eventually resettled in America, and she found herself as an adult unhappily working in finance. With a little bit of coaxing from her husband of nearly 30 years, Boun, she eventually quit her day job to pursue her culinary passion. She is now successfully running two businesses, working alongside her son, Chef Bobby, and showcasing her love of Lao food with the world through what she’s dubbed as the “Lao Food Movement.”
Last fall, we had the honor of hosting Chef Seng at our SouthEATS Austin Dinner and she was able to share a little bit of her story with the 60+ guests at the intimate farm gathering. Now, we want to dig a bit deeper, so Christy will be sitting down with Chef Seng to find out more about her Lao food journey, what fuels her, her definition of courage, and what it means to be a refugee-turned-star-studded-Chef.
Join in on the conversation and submit your questions via Facebook or Instagram asap!
“Food is the ultimate equalizer… at the end of the day, everybody has to eat.” – Chef Yia Vang
Typically, you won’t find the Courageous Kitchen team giving you advice on which riveting television shows you should be watching. However, that may be able to change with the exciting new arrival of a show called, “Refugee Chef”. In six episodes the show will poignantly examine the challenging origins and immense contributions refugee chefs are making on the culinary scene all over the world. This includes Chef Yia Vang, a friend of Courageous Kitchen, who we were proud to feature in last year’s Courageous Family Dinner.
Watch the trailer for “Refugee Chef” on Channel NewsAsia:
Here’s the full list of chefs to be featured on Refugee Chef:
Episode 1: Queen of Nordic Vietnamese
Featuring: Anh Le
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Origin: Chef Ang Le and her family arrived in Denmark after escaping Vietnam by boat.
Episode 2: Hmong and Here
Featuring: Yia Vang
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Origin: Chef Yia was born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents escaped Laos during the Vietnam war.
Episode 3: Afghan at Last
Featuring: Javed Ghaderi
Location: Wollongong, Australia
Origin: Chef Javad escaped Afghanistan and would be deported three times, and spend his life savings before being resettled to Australia.
Episode 4: Beyond Bali
Featuring: Anita Saborn
Location: Paris, France
Origin: Anita’s family fled Indonesia to China where they traveled on fake passports to Paris, where they were granted political asylum.
Episode 5: Redefining Shangri-La
Featuring: Lobsang Dorjee Tsering
Location: Washington, DC
Origin: Dorjee was born to nomadic parents in Tibet, and had been a monk for 18 years before fleeing his homeland.
Episode 6: Aleppo Supper Club
Featuring: Ahmad Abo Aziz
Location: London, UK
Origin: The war in Syria brought danger and great tragedy to Ahmad and his family, and they left the city the loved looking for safety.
“People don’t see us refugees but we are there.” – Chef Anh Le
In today’s political climate, giving anything a refugee label is to condemn it to controversy and scandal. This show, however, bucks the trend and takes the weighty topic head on. In doing so the show humanizes the refugee situation in a way not always possible in today’s news headlines and sensational political commentary. We’re challenged to take a look into the lives of each of the chefs and to have a sampling of the obstacles they overcame to achieve success whether with their restaurants, efforts to challenge or their efforts to help others.
The show airs on Saturday, February 24th on Channel NewsAsia at 7:30pm Bangkok time. You can also stream the episodes on demand for free, here.
Thank you for being here and following along our journey! 2017 was a big year for Courageous Kitchen because we launched our social enterprise doing Thai cooking tutorials in Bangkok and San Diego. Although we have been cooking with kids for more than four years now, developing a business model and implementing it successfully was our biggest and most rewarding challenge of the past year. Well we’re not stopping there! With your help and a big boost of confidence from a successful 2017, we’re outlining 5 crazy and courageous goals we hope to strive for in 2018!
1) Specialized Cooking Classes for Young Adults and Teens
In 2017 we held our first cooking camp for pre-teens, hosting 11 children for a full three days of cooking. The activities were a blast! We had help from a visiting volunteer chef, all the way from New Zealand, and the students tried their hand at everything from Japanese food, to spicy Thai dishes, to baking. The time with the pre-teens helped us realize both how bright and capable they are, and the need to have more specialized instruction dedicated to them. So this year we will be focusing on them in more activities, both to build up their English language skills, and confidence in the kitchen. The group includes many students who overcome incredible odds every time they show up cook in the Courageous Kitchen!
The older brothers and sisters in our young adults group, on the other hand, are so skilled in the kitchen that they tend to overshadow their younger siblings. We are bringing them new challenges in the kitchen this year, with lessons that build on each other, challenge them to create entire meals, and provide more vocational opportunities so they can get real world experience doing what they love. The student’s English speaking skills have grown leaps and bounds, but they must continue to develop their abilities to read and memorize recipes, work independently, and adapt to unexpected challenges.
Keep in mind these are students who may not have imagined before that they could aspire to be more than street food vendors and construction workers. But with your support and warm invitations from local businesses, we’ve taken many of them to make their first visits to real restaurants and even commercial kitchens. These opportunities give the students something to aspire to, and help them better understand the big picture of our transformation mission in their community.
2) Build Stronger Teams to Serve Our Students and Families
Early in the life of our young organization we needed support for material items. We needed rice and cooking equipment, and food for families in need. We didn’t just have them on our wishlist, we needed those things urgently! After success in improving the conditions in the community and carving out a space where we can teach comfortably, we are turning our attention away from material needs, toward building stronger teams. This means adding paid staff to the Courageous Kitchen team who can really lay the foundation for the work that our volunteers arrive to do. Since many grants and other sources of funding do not allow us to allocate funds towards staffing needs, our ability to do this in the past has suffered. However, the income the charity generates through our cooking classes and street food tours, should help us expand our team this year. Then with stronger team cohesion we can also better keep our donors updated, by more regularly telling the stories of lives being changed with your support.
3) Offer More Unique Cooking Classes and Products
There are plenty of options for cooking classes in Bangkok. In such a competitive business, we’re always adapting our classes to make the more local, personalized, and unique. This helps attract different types of customers and makes each of the classes more interesting to teach for us. For example, while you may only be able to cook standard Thai dishes in a typical cooking class, our small class size allows us to offer more unique dishes, such as this pineapple and seafood curry. If you’re planning to cook with us in 2018, be sure to also ask about our special menus featuring harder to find hilltribe dishes and spicy food from the Thai countryside!
We’re not only increasing types of dishes we make with our guests, but the types of classes we offer too. We’re now offering an evening cooking class for families with children in Bangkok. During the class we will do interactive cooking demos with our guests, especially for the children attendance. This class was developed because feedback from guests indicated there is a shortage of family oriented activities, including less demanding cooking classes in Bangkok. While the morning class may be too intense, this new class gets everyone active rolling summer rolls, sticky rice dumplings, and other fun, edible treats. Parents and other kitchen weary visitors can also relax while we prepare the rest of dinner for you!
At our last class for 2017, there was a special surprise waiting for each of the students a full week before Christmas. Disguised in black trash bags, friends from Bangkok Patana School delivered over 70 presents to give away. Instead of giving indiscriminately the gifts, which came from the Year 6 students at Bangkok Patana’s primary school, were tailored to the age and gender of our kids. For our older students, for instance, many of the gift boxes were filled not only with fun, educational items, but with much needed toiletries too. In 2018 we hope to develop more long term partnerships with other schools, religious organizations, and businesses. The long term oriented relationships give time for outsiders to better understand the work we’re doing and the needs we’re addressing for families at risk in urban Bangkok.
5) Be Kind to the Environment and Grow More of Our Own Food
Our last courageous challenge for 2018, is one we’re always working towards! We’re upping the ante this year, and began in January by offering our guests straws made with the hollow stem of the morning glory plant. The eco friendly alternative also looks great in our glasses of herbal butterfly and lemongrass teas. We have also been using more interesting plating thanks to a local company producing plates from the wood of betel nut palms.
The material is biodegradable and a natural alternative to plastic plates or styrofoams used too often to serve and store food. The plates appear occasionally in our cooking classes, but are especially convenient on our Street Food 101 Tour. The tour takes guests off the beaten path to eat street food, which is often doled out in overly generous amounts into plastic bags or styrofoam plates. The feedback from guests and even many of the vendors we visit has been overwhelmingly positive, and we hope to continue to be more environmentally conscious in our endeavors in the future too!
