Kasma Loha-unchit (born 1950 in Thailand) is a Thai-American cooking teacher, author, and tour guide.
Loha-unchit grew up in Thailand, [1] outside of Bangkok in the countryside. [2] Her parents were Chinese. [2] In 1968, she moved to the United States to attend college. She settled in the San Francisco area in 1972. [3] Loha-unchit earned her master's degree in business from the University of California, Berkeley. [3] She had attended Arizona State for her undergraduate degree. [2] After school, she married her first husband, who committed suicide when she was twenty-nine. [2]
For some time, she worked as a marketing analyst, but started cooking, teaching and giving tours in 1985. [3] She began offering cooking classes to earn extra income, drawing on what she had learned from her mother and grandmother. Eventually she shifted to teaching full-time, wrote two books on Thai cuisine, and started offering "food tours" to different regions of Thailand. She is currently married to her second husband, Michael Babcock. [4] Professionally, she has kept the name Loha-unchit, as is shown clearly in the cited biography. [5]
In April 2015 she indicated that she will be retiring from teaching and tour-leading within the next several years. [6]
Loha-unchit teaches hands on cooking classes in a private kitchen. Loha-unchit has been teaching out of her own cooking school in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1985. [7] Her teaching method involves introducing students to Thai culture as well as Thai cuisine. [8] She takes students to Asian markets and teaches them about the ingredients they use. [9] The name of her company is Thai Food and Travel. [10]
Loha-unchit writes entirely on Thai cooking. Her first book, It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions and the Joys of Thai Cooking, won the 1996 Julia Child award as Best International Cookbook for 1995. [11] [12] [13] The Chicago Tribune called It Rains Fishes "a real charmer" and described how the book introduces readers to both Thai cooking and Thai culture. [14] Her second book, Dancing Shrimp, was published in 2000 and was described by Restaurant Hospitality as helping Western chefs easily learn Thai cooking. [7] The Chicago Tribune described Dancing Shrimp as an exploration of "the cuisine of her homeland through a variety of the seafood so plentiful in Thailand." The title of Dancing Shrimp comes from a type of Thai dish made of tiny, translucent freshwater shrimp. [3]
Loha-unchit offers guided culinary tours to Thailand. [15]