Khao Sok isn’t the first place you’d think to do a Thai-style cooking class; normally people recommend going to Chiang Mai. But, this national park promises much to anyone that wants to cook a meal from farm (or rainforest) to table.
The National Park is home to the world’s oldest evergreen rainforest. As such, all sorts of plants grow here from rafflesias (the world’s largest flower) to pitcher plants and tall coconut palms. The incredible biodiversity within Khao Sok makes it a nature lover’s paradise where you can stay, trek and cook amongst other activities, whilst surrounded by amazing scenery.
Back in March, we had the chance to visit Rungfah Farm Stay and join their Khao Sok cooking class. Nestled underneath the limestone mountains of Khao Sok, P’You runs the farm stay with his family. They recently began teaching the cooking classes just before COVID hit, which unfortunately stopped any international visitors from coming. However, he saw a surge in domestic tourism, especially with Mark Wiens visiting in 2020. Now with Thailand fully open, hopefully, tourists from all over the world will begin coming to the stunning Khao Sok and learning how to cook in the rainforest.
Table of Contents
What’s Cooking?
What you cook at Rungfah Farm Stay is determined by the seasons and what’s currently growing on the farm. So, if you come to this Khao Sok cooking class in the wet season, you’ll probably be cooking different dishes than if you were to go in the dry season. But regardless of the season, you can be sure that whatever you’re going to cook and eat will taste super fresh after having just been picked.
On the menu for us were 5 dishes:
- Red Curry with Chicken
- Chicken Basil with Young Bamboo Shoots
- Banana Blossom and Long Bean Tempura
- Luffa and Sweet Potato with Duck Egg
- Pandan Rice in Bamboo
With the menu set, it was time to start cooking. But first, we still had to forage a few more ingredients.
Farm Tour
With impressive limestone cliffs as a backdrop, P’You took us around his farm. There was such a wide array of herbs, fruits and vegetables here. With basil alone, they had over five different varieties like Thai, Holy, Lemon and Clove. As we walked around the farm, P’You would point out different ingredients like long beans and different types of aubergines which we’d taste or pick to use later on in the cooking. We also harvested bamboo shoots by chopping down one of the young bamboos and cutting out the root.
With ingredients in hand, we walked through the vibrant and lush garden to their outdoor kitchen to begin Rungfah’s Khao Sok cooking class.
1 – Making Coconut Milk the Classic Way
First things firsts, we need coconut milk for our red curry and fuel for our fire. Luckily, both of those come from coconuts.
P’You explained that the brown coconuts are used for coconut milk, whilst the young green coconuts are used for desserts and water. Interestingly, the coconut variety matters as well; so the coconuts that are bred to be brown for their coconut milk generally won’t have tasty water when they’re green and vice versa. Another fun fact about green coconuts is that in Thailand there are two main types; one with water tasting like pandan and one which tastes like jasmine.
With our brown coconuts in hand, it was time to make the milk. P’You showed us the traditional technique of grating the coconuts. We sat on a wooden stool with a circular-shaped grater attached to it. To scrape out the flesh we had to push the coconut down 3 times on the grate and then slightly rotate it, continuing until no white flesh was left on the shell. We added water to the bowl full of grated coconut and squeezed the flesh with the water to extract all of the flavours until we had our coconut milk.
2 – Pandan Rice in Bamboo
Next was a completely new technique for making rice that I’d never seen before. Whilst we were grating coconuts, P’You started a fire with coconut husks and old bamboo that we would use for cooking the rice.
First, we had to prepare the rice before we could cook it. We poured a good handful of rice into a large elephant ear leaf. Next, we folded the leaf in half like a book and rolled it tightly before folding the sides in to make a little parcel. P’You then got our cooking vessel – a piece of bamboo, to which we stuffed some pandan at the bottom, followed by our rice parcels and filled it to the top with water. Carefully, P’You put the bamboo on the fire, letting the water boil and the rice steam in their elephant ear parcels.
3 – Red Curry with Chicken
We started with the red curry paste. In a Thai-style mortar, we pounded a mixture of turmeric, galangal, dried chillies, garlic, salt, coconut sugar, shallot, shrimp paste and lemongrass until we reached a smooth paste.
We could then begin work on the curry. First, we fried garlic until slightly fragrant before adding our chicken and the coconut milk we made earlier. To this we added sweet potato and our homemade red curry paste, changing the colour from a milky white to a vibrant red. Finally, after some tasting, we adjusted the seasoning with salt and sugar and added in some kaffir lime leaves.
Whilst the red curry simmered away over the charcoal stove, we worked on the rest of the dishes.
4 – Chicken Basil with Young Bamboo Shoots
A quick stirfry, similar to the Chicken with Hot Basil that I cooked in Asia Scenic’s Chiang Mai cooking class. Like the curry, we started with frying garlic until slightly fragrant followed by our chicken. Next in were the slices of young bamboo and the seasonings; chillies, oyster sauce, fish sauce and sugar, along with a little water. Once the sauce had reduced slightly, we took it off the heat and served it in a bamboo dish.
5 – Luffa and Sweet Potato with Duck Egg
Another quick stirfry and again we started with frying garlic, to which we added eggs and scrambled them. We removed the scrambled eggs from the pan and replaced them with our luffa (a cucumber-like fruit), parboiled sweet potato and our seasonings; fish sauce and oyster sauce. We cooked this on high heat, watching the sugars in the seasonings bubble and caramelise before adding the garlic and egg back in, mixing and serving up the dish.
6 – Banana Blossom and Long Bean Tempura
The final dish was an assortment of veggie tempura. First, we started with the red long beans by dipping them two at a time into the batter and gently placing them in our pre-heated pot of oil. We deep-fried these until golden and crispy, took them out with our tongs and seasoned them with salt.
Next up was the banana blossom tempura. We had already sliced the banana blossom into 1 cm rings and soaked them in a bowl of salted water. Banana blossom quickly oxidised with the air and turns brown, so soaking them in salted water prevents this. When we were ready to begin cooking, we took out the rings, dried them and dumped them all in the tempura batter, thoroughly mixing until each ring was coated in batter. With our oil pre-heated we picked up clumps of banana blossom rings and dropped them into the oil. Like the long beans, we deep-fried the banana blossoms until golden brown and they were almost reminiscent of onion bhajis.
Time For Lunch – How Did It Taste?
There was a ton of food for just 2 of us, but still, we couldn’t get enough. Each of the dishes had been arranged on the table in their bamboo “troughs”. P’You placed the rice parcels in front of us. Unwrapping the elephant ear leaf revealed steamy rice as the flavour of pandan filled the air. From top to bottom the dishes were Red Curry, Chicken Basil, Vegetable Tempura and Luffa with Egg.
The Red Curry with Chicken had a warming heat from the chillies, followed by flavours of coconut, lemongrass and clove basil – not usually typical of a Thai red curry. The Chicken Basil with Bamboo was the perfect balance of sweet and salty with the pairing of oyster sauce and caramel-like coconut sugar. The hot basil added a tantalising aniseed flavour and the slightly tender young bamboo shoots had a flavour similar to water chestnuts.
This was my first time trying luffa and I was not disappointed. The Luffa and Sweet Potato with Duck Egg was garlicky and moreish. It was like comfort food with the balance of saltiness and sweetness and the soft textures of luffa, sweet potato and egg. But we couldn’t get enough of the Vegetable Tempura, especially the banana blossoms of which we had about 5 each. They were super light and crunchy, not oily at all. The banana blossoms didn’t taste of much, but they were a great vessel for sweet chilli sauce.
And with that, the day was over. With our bellies full, P’You drove us back to our hotel whilst we decided whether we should skip dinner tonight or not.
Price and Booking Details
Expect 3 hours for the cooking class at Rungfah. The whole experience began at 9:35 am with P’You picking us up from our hotel and driving us to Rungfah. The farm tour and cooking class lasted about 1 hr 30 mins and we sat down to eat at around 11:35 am. We got back to our hotel at 12:35 pm.
How To Book: The best way to contact P’You is via Facebook, from here you can enquire about dates and prices. They also offer accommodation here, so you could roll this and the Khao Sok Cooking Class into one.
Price: ฿900 / £21 / $26
Address: Rungfah Farm Stay
Looking for Khao Sok Accommodation?
There are tons of options available in Khao Sok from budget hostels to luxury treehouses. Here are some of the ones we recommend:
Rungfah Farm Stay: Book via Facebook
Budget Hostel: Coco Khao Sok Hostel – 6-Bed Dorm, ฿210, £5, $6
Budget Hotel: Khao Sok Jungle Huts Resort – Jungle Hut with A/C, ฿295, £7, $8.40
Mid-Range Option: Rock and Treehouse Resort – Flora Bungalow, ฿1475, £35, $42
Luxury Option: Our Jungle House – Treehouse Double, ฿2570, £61, $73
Thanks for reading!
