Bangkok private cooking class

The Blue Elephant has invited us to a private class to pick up some handy tips aimed at the restaurant chef rather than the hobby cook. We are given over to one of their top chefs who gives us a lesson in making our own chili paste and chili oil. I am the class photographer and chief asker of dumb questions. I am very competent at one of these.

We are treated to chili paste sandwiches, sort of like peanut butter but with a real zing! The color is gorgeous. The next thing we do is cook a fish dish. This is wonderful, but not something everyone will like. Using a small sea bass we fry the head, tail and a dozen bite sized pieces. While this is cooking we mix up a yummy chili & pineapple sauce. Putting everything together on the plate we rebuild the fish, ladle the sauce and add deep fried bay leaves to the top. Delicious, but the darn thing is staring at me.

This was really fun to have a private lesson and we are ready to head out when we get invited to tour their processing plant. All of the prep work for the 9 luxury restaurants is done in Thailand and shipped overnight. This includes the cleaning and packaging the vegetables, making batches of the sauces, oils and pastes. The farms in Thailand provide fresh and lovely vegetables year round, the labor is available and affordable and this process provides consistency from restaurant to restaurant to have the basics all provided from the same location.

This is a very sterile operation and we are required to don long lab coats, hair nets and rubber boots. The operation is spotless and very impressive!

The Blue Elephant has 9 locations of their Royal Thai Cuisine restaurants, several fast Thai service restaurants and provides prepackaged meals for sale in grocery stores. They have a good business plan and are now looking to expand into the USA. Perhaps we can help them with distribution introductions. We could be a first customer for them in the USA.

We have the best of tour guides today from the Chef that showed us the recipes to the our host for the 45 minute ride to the factory & back to the factory director who interrupted his busy day to show us around. A unique and wonderful experience.