Lao-Thai Cooking Class at James Street Cooking School

When I left my previous job, my fantastic co-workers gave me a gift voucher for the James Street Cooking School. I was so excited, I trolled their website for ages looking at all the classes that I wanted to try, however I'm a slightly nervous person and I am apprehensive in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people and wasn't quite confident enough to book a course. I tried to talk my mother into coming down and taking a course with me, unfortunately that didn't work out. I put off making a decision for so long that I was running out of time to use the voucher. In the end, I took the plunge and booked myself into a Lao-Thai class.

D thought I was silly as I have already taken a Thai cooking class, but the class description says that it explores the differences and similarities between Lao and Thai cuisine. Plus, I love the balance of flavours in Thai food so I wasn't worried even if it was the same kind of food.

I really enjoyed the class. I found that the background information the instructor gave about the Lao-Thai cuisine really interesting. This type of food comes from a very low socio-economic area and works to make small amounts of the more expensive and hard to obtain ingredients (like meat) go a long way. They steam muddy-tasting fish in a flavourful sauce to mask any residual muddy taste. It was really interesting.


We made four dishes: Stuffed Bamboo Shoots; Green Papaya Salad with Sweet Crispy Pork, Steamed Fish with Young Ginger and Spicy Minced Chicken Salad. My favourites were the green papaya salad and the spicy minced chicken salad.

I would love to go to another one of their classes, but I would love it even more if I could go with a friend. There were a few other people there on my own (we made our own group), but most of the other people were there in pairs or even in groups.


After the cooking was done, we all adjourned to eat our creations. Happily, there were no failures and everything was really lovely. It was a great night.

James Street Cooking School
Mezzanine Level
James St Market
22 James Street
Fortitude Valley Qld 4006
Ph: (07) 3252 8850
www.jamesstcookingschool.com.au