Cooking with Poo | A Bangkok Cookery Class | A Recipe for Coconut Chicken Soup

I did a cookery class with Poo.

Go on. Say it. You know you want to. I don’t mind. Go on.

“That must have been shit”.

Feel better?

Yes, I cooked with Poo. And I liked it. (Unfortunately I can’t take credit for that excellent *cough* gag. It was printed on our aprons).

Poo is the affectionate nickname for Khun Saiyuud Diwong, a long-term resident of Khlong Toey, the largest informal settlement in Bangkok. In 2007 she was cooking and serving food from her kitchen, when she met Anji Barker, an Australian, who saw her potential and convinced her to set up and run her own cookery school. Although dubious at first, low in confidence and unable to speak English, she started small and worked hard. Cooking with Poo is now one of the most popular classes in Bangkok. She teaches up to 12 people, six days a week, and employs staff to help her run it. It is often fully booked for weeks in advance.

But she wasn’t just content with helping herself and her family. Along with Anji, she also set up the charity Helping Hands, to encourage other women to build their own fair-trade micro-businesses based on their own particular skills and talents. She’s become a mentor, a role-model and an inspiration for the community she works in, and her company and charity are examples of how successful these grass-roots, community-based initiatives really can be.

You can book Cooking with Poo classes online, choosing between 6 different menus of 3 dishes each, one for each day of the week the class runs. You meet up early, at an easy to find central location, and are then taken via mini-bus to a local market, and then on to the class.

The market was the same one I visited on this tour, so I’m getting to know my way around it! Our guide pointed out different ingredients and explained their uses in Thai cooking. The wet markets in South East Asia are not for the squeamish. Brown insects are piled high on ice. Fish flip about in shallow trays of water, eels squirm next to them. Chicken feet are crammed into large glass vases. Frogs sit, tied up, still croaking, in wire covered buckets. Offal lies in big, steaming piles. Yellow, scrawny chickens spill their juices on to the floor. You’re wearing flip flops. The smells are strong. The heat doesn’t help.

From there we drove to the edge of Khlong Toey, where we disembarked and walked through the settlement to the Cooking with Poo classroom. I remember thinking how neat it was! I spent three months living on the edge of Nylanda slum in Kisumu, Kenya which was very different – a complete mess with rubbish everywhere, and stinking, overflowing open drains. In Khlong Toey the narrow alleyways were lined with pots, filled with bright green leaves and pretty pink flowers. The houses themselves are colourful, painted in an array of shades. Children run and play. Yet the grubby muslin curtains hanging over the doors waft, and give glimpses of dark, cramped spaces. It was somewhere I was really pleased to have seen, but certainly not a place I would have ventured into otherwise.

We cooked three dishes, all of which were fairly simple. I went on a Wednesday so these were Tom Kha Gai (coconut chicken soup), Pad Thai and Yum Som-o (pomelo salad with chicken). While I was pleased to have had a lesson in making the ubiquitous Pad Thai, it was the other two dishes I particularly enjoyed. The pomelo salad was fresh and light, the dressing a balanced combination of palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind and chilli paste. I chatted to an expat who said that she already has Poo’s book and regularly makes this for her children, who love it!

I can’t say that I learnt a great deal at Cooking with Poo. It’s certainly not one for experienced chefs, but I liked that Poo has simplified the recipes, and made Thai food accessible to everyone. I can definitely imagine making the pomelo salad and chicken soup back in the UK.

With this in mind, here is her recipe for Tom Kha Gai. I thought at the time how perfect it would be for evenings when you come in late from work. It’s ready in minutes, and is delicious, simple and warming. The chilli continues to infuse as the soup sits in the bowl, so the last mouthful is the most potent one!

Poo’s Tom Kha Gai, Chicken Coconut Soup

Ingredients:

400g chicken

200g mushrooms (quartered)

2 cups coconut milk

1 cup water

6 tbsp fish sauce

5 slices galangal (use ginger if you can’t get hold of it)

1 green chilli, pierced with a knife

2 lemongrass stalks (sliced)

6 kaffir lime leaves (ripped up)

3 tbsp lime juice

1 bunch of coriander

Method: 

• Place water, coconut milk, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves, mushrooms, lemongrass, chilli and galangal in a pan. Heat until boiling.
• Add the chicken. Leave for a few minutes, until cooked
• Turn off the heat
• Stir in coriander and lime juice

Cooking with Poo website, and you can buy her cookbook here.
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