Spicy Thai Restaurant offers cooking classes
by NICHOLAS J. PRIMERANO Ken-Ton Editor

Spicy Thai owner Bob Purananda shows his cooking school students, Danielle Hopp, left, and Nancy and Ron Sutz how to cook both traditional and innovative Thai food. Classes run on Saturday's from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Photo by Joe Eberle Purchase photos at www.BeeNews.com

Have you ever gone into your favorite restaurant, ordered up your favorite dish and wondered just how the staff prepared it so deliciously?

Bob Purananda, owner of Spicy Thai Restaurant, is taking the mystery out of the magic by offering cooking classes inside the Sheridan Drive eatery.

"The customer always inspires me," said Bob. "They always ask me how we prepare this dish or that dish."

Purananda said that reading a recipe for a Thai dish and cooking a Thai dish aren't always the same.

"Some ingredients are hard to find in this town," he said. "We teach people how to prepare naem sod (a traditional Thai salad) and other dishes like curry."

Purananda's concept was always to use the art of cooking Thai food to the customers' benefit, so they can take the recipe home and create something for themselves.

They don't necessarily have to stick to the recipe, which is what makes Thai cooking different. A pinch of this and a dash of that and another great-tasting recipe is born.

"The cooking doesn't have to be in the menu," he said. "People can have a Thai party in the summer time and create something with the leftover."

Purananda said he wants people, not just his cooking students, to see what else Thai food has to offer, not just what they see on the menu.

"Thai food is great because you can do a lot of home cooking with it," he said. "It takes a little bit more time, but it is better."

Bob says that sometimes he departs from the traditional recipe, and his students and customers will ask him questions as to why he did what he did - for example, adding chicken stock to a recipe, as opposed to coconut milk or water.

"I want the people in the class to know that there are five flavors of Thai, and they can put their own flavor on them," he said, referring to the staple flavors of Thai cooking - sweet, sour, spicy, bitter and salty. "If they like sweet sauce, they can do sweet sauce, but if they like sour, they can do sour as well. It is just fit to their taste."

He prepares various dishes during the classes and lets students taste them, encouraging them to add different flavors if they prefer.

Some of the main ingredients in the recipes the students use are garlic, basil, ginger, curry, coconut milk, curry paste and lemon grass.

Lemon grass, or "dtah-kry" in the Thai language, is an aromatic, citrus-flavored tropical grass that is used in many Thai dishes.

"The food doesn't have to be spicy - a lot of people think that Thai food has to be spicy," he said. "There are a lot of dishes that are spiced, but you don't have to have the strong flavor."

There is a lot of chicken in the recipes as well.

The classes run from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays at Spicy Thai Restaurant, 2865 Sheridan Drive. Anyone interested in registering for the classes should call Purananda at 831-3921.