18 June 2005: The First Day of the Workshop

Finally the workshop began.
Anne Xiradakis arrived on Sunday morning, Pim and I met her to prepare the workshop and had dinner together - it was a Thai dinner, of course, at Talingpling Restaurant at Pan Road. Anne got a quite an introduction to Thai food!


The first day of the workshop started with Anne's lecture at Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University. There were around 150s students and people at the lecture. It was quite successful indeed. Her lecture was divided into two parts: the first part was about her works where you can find in her website, the second part was about a historical survey of food+soup culture in France - very interesting indeed, I also learned that the French got a very sophisticate table set from Russia!



After the lecture, we met the students from 3 universities: Chulalongkorn, King Mongkut Thonburi and King Mongkut Lakrabang. We gave them a brief to make an exploration + investigation about Thai food and eating culture with images, sketches and so on. Besides, they had to do a shopping for cooking 'a soup' for the evening dinner altogether - it was quite an event.

After lunch at Jim Thompson House where Anne had a chance to meet Jeab (Gridtiya), our Thai curator and to see the house, we went also for a shopping for some ingredients Anne needed for her 'soup' at Siam Paragon, one of the supermarket lover's paradise....

Around 5 pm. we arrived to VER Gallery where we would have the cooking session and the dinner party altogether. The Gallery is owned by Rirkrit Tiravanija where there are always nice and interesting people around. It is situated next to Chao Phraya River, next to Millenium Hilton Hotel but surrounded by very local market and the traffic of people going in and out from the ferry - very interesting location.

The gallery is equipped with quite a full-option kitchen for cooking our dinner.


The students were having fun preparing their soups. Every couple had to make one soup + Anne's soup, we ended up having eight kinds of soup!


The bitter melon stuffed with mince and spices soup... it was the first time them to make it!

The ingredients for 'Palo Soup'. They were boiling the stock.

To make a simple clear soup with egg sausage 'more design', the students painted the egg sausage with food colors! I was very impressed.


While waiting for the soup to be read, we were having fun, food and wine.

The first soup was ready- Tom Yam Kung with Fondue style! Very creative :)


Clear soup with seaweed, mince balls and egg sausage. The other one is Tom Kha Kai!

This one is Squid with lime and garlic soup.. I am not so sure if it is soup.. it is something in between.

"Jab Chai" or 10-Vegetable Soup. It is a Chinese origin, very convenient if you have a lot left over...


Finally the bitter melon soup is finished too... although it took them quite sometime.

Anne's Soup, Tomato Soup with little alphabet pasta - she got the recipe from her grandmother!


A little technical problem happened while the cooking process was going on: the gas was finished! it was too late to get a replacement, so a guy from Ver Gallery made this three chachoal stoves for us! Very impressive indeed. Anne also cooked her soup on this stove!


Everything was ready... we had them all...It was unbelievable that we could cook and ate them all...very good and pleasant. :) Although it was quite hot from the food and the weather....


As the Chinese say, every party will come to the end... we ended everything with dish washing session. The students were doing well...


At the end, we all were hot, exhausted and super full... Our beloved curator, Jeab, said ...'it is a paradise in hell'. Our experience of the moment, Bangkok in general, both could fit perfectly with the sentence. Here is the picture from the window of the gallery before we left. Paradise in Hell...


Let's see what the students would show us for their first presentation...:) We were all excited.