When the staff and students from Yew Chung International School from Shanghai joined us for a week of fieldwork, adventure and cultural exploration, a definite highlight was the Jungle Cooking course.
Over the course of a morning the students not only learnt to cook some delicious Thai food but also how to survive in the jungle. For the students from YCIS their ‘jungle’ was our farm where they searched for food, learnt to pick vegetables and cooked their jungle lunch.
First the students built cooking fires and were amazed to discover that it could take the whole morning to prepare just one meal! As the students were in the ‘jungle’ there were no bowls, utensils or pots and pans so everything had to be made from natural materials. They barbequed meat and corn on bamboo skewers, steamed mushrooms in banana leaf packages and cooked sticky rice inside bamboo tubes.
At the end of a fun morning of cooking the teachers and students all sat down to a delicious Thai meal that the students were amazed and proud of creating. The spicy chili paste (nam prik) and the chicken and mint salad (laab) were definite favourites.
