It’s often a great idea to sharpen your skills and take cooking classes to broaden your horizons. Since I love Thai cuisine, I recently participated in one of Chef Parinya Loptson’s Thai Cooking classes at her BCD Culinary Academy in downtown Langley. It was a rainy evening in late January, Lawrence and I ventured over to her beautiful academy where we participated in their Thai Cuisine C class.
For the past couple of years BCD Culinary Academy has offered a variety of different Thai cooking classes as well as other classes and cuisines by Chef Parinya as well as other visiting chefs.
One thing that I loved about this class is that we all had our own cooking station, the other thing is that Chef Parinya does a cooking demo for each of the dishes before we got started cooking each of the dishes.
The three dishes we were making that evening where Yellow Curry Chicken, Pad Prik Khing and Chow Mein Noodles with beef.
As the class started, Chef Parinya provided an overview of Thai cuisine and the ingredients were going to use. We each received a booklet featuring each of the recipes along with a resource as to where the ingredients could be purchased.
Each of us were assembled at our own cooking stations, all the ingredients were pre-measured and set out in front of us making this step easy for all of us. I began to follow the chefs instructions for the 1st dish and cooked up a storm and voila my Yellow Curry with Chicken was finished.
After cooking each of the dishes, we were seated at the dining room table where we each enjoyed eating our own curry along with rice that was already prepared for us to accompany the dishes.
On to the 2nd dish and to cooking the Pad Prik Khing with Pork for this dish we started off with red curry paste and you had to be careful to avoid making it to spicy, otherwise you end up adding more palm sugar to sweeten the dish which is what I ended up doing to find a tasteful balance.
On to the 3rd dish, making the Chow Mein Noodles with Beef, Chef Parinya explained that this dish isn’t Thai by origin, it is Chinese, years ago when she had opened her Ban Chok Dee Restaurant in downtown Langley a customer of the previous restaurant asked her to keep the Chow Mein Noodles on her menu as that was his favourite dish from the restaurant that was in that location before she opened her restaurant, she obliged. It has been a popular dish and it’s still on the menu.
Lawrence and I both had a great time learning each of the dishes, we also met some wonderful people who were equally passionate about cooking and eating Thai food. The classes are being offered a few nights each month, make sure to visit their website to find the dates and the classes that are of interest to you and be sure you reserve in advance.
Ticket prices range for the classes, Thai Cuisine C is $95 per person for each class and includes the demo, teaching, ingredients and the recipe booklet. BCD Culinary Academy is located at 20542 Fraser Hwy #10 in Langley. You can call them at (778) 242-1344 and find them on Instagram @bcdacademy and Chef Parinya @parinyaloptson
By: Richard Wolak