I Love Thai Cooking Classes

Pranee Khruasanit Halvorsen – best known as Pranee – first learned Thai cooking as a child in Phuket, Thailand, where her mom was a village chef famous for her Hua Mok, fish cake. Pranee’s earliest kitchen chores included grating coconut, pounding curry paste and cooking rice. By age 12, she took on more responsibility as the substitute cook for the family. Later, she worked for the Public Health Department on weekdays while helping with her family's food business on weekends.

When she met and married Robert Halvorsen, an economics professor at the University of Washington, and moved to Seattle, Pranee brought along a mortar and pestle and filled her kitchen with Thai herbs, spices and cooking equipment. Soon, friends started asking her for Thai cooking lessons.

“The best way to enjoy Thai food is to cook and share it with friends,” she says. “I loved the idea of having good times, socializing with people and sharing food the way it’s done in Thailand.” Teaching cooking, she discovered, was also more fun because she could share her skills and experiences along with the laughter and excitement of each culinary result.

Today, Pranee is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), a caterer, tour guide and cooking instructor whose popular classes in Thai cuisine are sellouts throughout the Northwest. Over the past seven years, her lively public speaking skills and enthusiasm and passion for teaching have caught fire. She is a culinary educator at PCC Cooks, Sur La Table, Dish It Up, A Chef’s Kitchen, Bayview School of Cooking, Blue Ribbon Cooking Culinary Center, Pacific Culinary Studio, Cook’s Pots & Table Tops, In Good Taste Cooking School and Cook's World. She has been featured in the Seattle Times, The Olympian, Enterprise Newspapers, Evergreen Monthly and Northwest Asian Weekly, to name a few.

Her recipes appear in The Veg-Feasting Cookbook (Book Publishing Co., 2005) and fund-raising cookbooks for KCTS, Seattle’s public television station, which also telecast her cooking demonstration as part of its pledge drive. Her enjoyable demonstrations and cooking draw crowds at numerous Northwest culinary events, including:

* Healthy Living Expo, hosted by KING-TV in Seattle
* Feast with Friends, sponsored by Futurewise, a Washington group dedicated to ensuring Washington and local governments manage growth responsibly
* Chefs in the Field: A Harvest Celebration Farm Tour, sponsored by King County Extension Food and Farms
* VegFest, sponsored by the Vegetarians of Washington, which draws nearly 100,000 to Seattle Center each year

Pranee visits Thailand annually to collect and preserve recipes from her family and her hometown Thai village. She leads culinary trips to Thailand where she teams up with other Thai chefs so Westerners can experience Thai food and culture in Bangkok, Ayuthaya, Chiang Mai, Krabi, Phang Nga and Phuket.

Pranee also offers private cooking lessons in home kitchens and caters private parties with authentic four-course Thai dinners. She focuses on fresh ingredients and uses Thai herbs from local markets.

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