Cooking where no one cooks – Part 2

In part 1, I talked about why everyone in Chiang Mai should cook, even though eating out may be cheap, convenient and delicious.

Now let’s get down to the practical stuff.

This post is specifically directed toward people living in Chiang Mai, but many of these tips may be useful for others.

 

You can make a kitchen anywhere

I worked for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, in Tucson, for several years, two of which involved regular cooking demonstrations. My job often required basically carting around an entire kitchen. This isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. I had a variety of supplies available to me, but most of the time, my mobile kitchen consisted of an electric frying pan (with extension cord) and a large plastic tub filled with various other kitchen essentials (knife, cutting board, spatula, large spoon, bowls, etc.). And depending on what I was making, I sometimes had a wheeled cooler as well. I became adept at setting this up quickly just about anywhere, including on a folding table at a farmers’ market. And if I didn’t have electricity available, a propane camping stove worked great outdoors.

What I’m trying to say is that if your place doesn’t have a kitchen, it’s very easy and pretty inexpensive to set one up. Hopefully your apartment has at least a kitchen sink, small counter space, and a refrigerator. If not, I know this can all be done on a table. (If you don’t believe me, see the previous paragraph.) And if you don’t have a refrigerator, stock up on the things that don’t require refrigeration, and then just buy what you need for the day.

 

Our setup

Here is what we started out with when we moved into our apartment:

 

• small countertop
• kitchen sink
• decent sized refrigerator
• electric kettle
• 2 glasses
• 1 spoon
• 1 cabinet above the sink/counter

 

 

 

 

We immediately bought:

• electric wok (came with a lid)
• rice cooker (cheapest, smallest one we could find–only has an on/off switch–we can make about 4 servings of rice at a time)
• surge protector/extension cord (our kitchen area has no convenient plugs)
• 1 small sharp knife
• 1 wooden spoontula (thanks, Brian, for the name)
• 1 small cutting board
• 2 glass bowls (deep and large enough to double as plates)
• 1 spoon (because we already had 1)
• 2 forks
• 3-pack storage containers (which can also double as bowls for cold food and for serving fruit)
• 1 sponge
• 1 small bottle of dish soap

All of this came out to about 1500 baht (about $45 USD). We bought all of this at Central Department Store inside Central Kad Suan Kaew Mall. If you shop around, I’m sure it’s possible to find these things for less at local markets or smaller stores, but we were on foot that day and enjoyed the convenience of this option. Ours are also pretty decent quality and have held up well so far over a month of continuous use.

 

We later bought:

• 2 mugs (for hot beverages for ladling soup)
• 1 larger knife (not completely necessary but nice for mincing garlic, cutting carrots, etc.)

We purchased these items for approximately 100 baht total at Tops.

 

Food

Kitchen staples:

• brown rice
• dry noodles
• lentils
• textured vegetable protein
• dried mushrooms
• quick cooking oats
• muesli
• onions
• garlic
• spices (coriander, cumin, black pepper, salt)
• soy sauce
• cooking oil (we use soybean)
• sesame oil
• mushroom sauce

(if you’re not a vegetarian, fish sauce and oyster sauce are often used locally instead of soy sauce and mushroom sauce)

 

Other foods we like to keep around:

• all sorts of fruits, whatever looks good and is a good price
• variety of vegetables for cooking and for salads (again whatever looks good and is a good price)
• bird’s eye chilies (if you like spicy food)
• limes
• green onions (aka: scallions or spring onions)
• cilantro (or other herbs that look good)
• yogurt
• eggs
• bread
• peanut butter (no oil added)
• jam (only fruit, sugar, and pectin if possible)

To give you an idea, we spend about 500 baht ($15 USD) every 2-3 days and get about 6 meals (between the 2 of us) and several snacks from that. Those trips are mostly for fruits and vegetables and sometimes the occasional staple that ran out. We’ve made a huge effort not to let anything spoil, so we buy only what we think we can use within a couple of days, and it’s really paid off. We find throwing food away quite painful, especially since it’s not really practical for us to compost at the moment. There are some chickens nearby that we’ve considered throwing scraps to, but we’re not sure how their owners would feel about it.

In the next post, I’ll give you some more practical tips for cooking with electric appliances, as well as some of my go to recipes.

Cooking where no one cooks – Part 1

Where are we now?

We’ve now been in Chiang Mai, Thailand for just over a month this time around. It’s a haven for digital nomad expats–apparently, there are 40,000 expats living in Chiang Mai, and walking around town, I believe it. Living expenses are very low, internet is fast and widely available, and there’s lots of fun stuff going on all the time.

Yes, we cook

For those who may be unfamiliar, food in Thailand (especially street food) is cheap, convenient and delicious. So understandably, people we talk to are constantly amazed that we actually cook here (though, admittedly, most of the people we talk to are expats). They’re even more amazed that we cook daily, usually at least 2 meals every day. When you talk to expats who live here about getting a place with a kitchen, most will say “don’t bother.” But I say otherwise. If you’re planning to stay for any length of time, get a kitchen–even a little counter space and a sink is sufficient, as you really don’t need more than that, and electric appliances are very affordable. (More detail on that in the next post)

Here are my reasons.

1.  It’s also inexpensive to buy and cook food at home

Even the Western-style grocery stores by us (Rimping and Tops) are cheap if you’re careful about what you buy. Interestingly, both Tops and Rimping are inside shopping malls, one very modern, and the other…well, let’s just say its heyday has passed. You can find basically any food item you could want from the Western world, but much of that category tends to be pretty expensive, so we’ve tried to stick mostly to what the locals might buy there.

But even better–there are tons of local markets all around. These markets can either be pop-up style like farmers’ markets back home, or they can be more established in an open-air, warehouse sort of building. The latter type might require a bit more courage, and ideally, an orientation from a local. You can find everything from a huge variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, to recently butchered meats, freshly made curry paste, coconut milk squeezed while you wait, flowers and candles for visiting temples, and much more. They’re great places to find just about anything you’d want, inexpensively.

Admittedly, we haven’t taken advantage of local markets as much as we’d like to, but we’re going to start. This morning we tried one that’s more of the farmers’ market kind, at Baan Kang Wat, and maybe it’s just getting started, but it was rather small. We did find some delicious jam and a woman who sells hummus, but sadly she ran out by the time we got there. Frank did get a delicious grilled cheese sandwich, and we shared some nice local kombucha. But just remember, don’t shake your kombucha. I turned it upside down a couple times just to try to mix it and managed to explode it somewhat. Oh well!

 

2.  You can control what goes into it

Since it seems like all the other expats eat out for every meal, I’ve heard complaints that restaurants use MSG, too much oil, and often that vegan/vegetarian food is not actually vegan/vegetarian. The reason for that last complaint is one that I’ve personally experienced. Many Thai cooks don’t realize that fish sauce and oyster sauce aren’t vegetarian by many people’s standards. They just think of the meat itself and not the sauces. Interestingly, though, sometimes if you order your meal vegetarian, they do often ask if you want egg. Coming from the US as a vegetarian, it’s interesting that here they would be more careful about eggs than about fish sauce or oyster sauce.

3.  You’re probably tired of eating out for every meal

As much as we love restaurants, after 4 months of travel through Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, eating almost every single meal out, we were really getting tired of it. We absolutely love waking up, making some oatmeal, cutting up a bunch of fruit, making some tea, and relaxedly eating at home. This takes us maybe 5 minutes even when we’re not rushing. In the past, breakfast involved getting up and dressed, going out and often having to settle for something we didn’t actually want. If we were lucky we could find some kind of yogurt/fruit/muesli bowl, but that wasn’t always an option. Traditional Asian breakfasts are rarely vegetarian, and the “Western” alternative was often expensive and included some kind of unknown sausage, oily eggs and a couple pieces of white toast.

4.  It’s fun to use ingredients that you don’t have at home

Bird’s eye chilies, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime zest, kaffir lime leaves, Thai ginseng, passion fruit, star fruit, soursop, dragonfruit, many varieties of bananas, longan, rambutan, mangosteen, etc., etc. The list goes on and on. You may be lucky enough to have an Asian market at home, but odds are, these ingredients will never be as fresh or as cheap as they are here. And do we really want to support the importing of foods from all the way across the globe? So use them now while they’re local.

5.  You can practice new skills

How many of us have a souvenir cookbook from a cooking class that’s just been sitting on a shelf? Use it! Another side benefit is that getting used to cooking in a tiny space will make anything back home seem luxurious.

In part 2, we’ll get down to the practical stuff.

 

Some more photos from Baan Kang Wat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos from a market we visited in Bangkok in June