The Taste of Thailand

The taste of Thailand: a splash of coconut milk; a dollop of curry paste; stir-fried chicken; eggplant, lime leaves, asian basil and chilies; fish sauce to taste.

These are the ingredients for a traditional green curry I leaned at A Lot of Thai Home Cooking Class in Chiang Mai.

A girl named Welcome - "My parents were hippies, what d'you want?" she asks - recommends the course. She's been volunteering in Thailand and speaks the language; I figure she has a better idea than most about experiences that get at genuine Thai culture and keep her advice in mind. In Chiang Mai, I get the last space for a Tuesday class.

Our teacher, Siripen Siryabhaya, whom everyone calls Yui, is full of energy and keen to ensure a positive experience for her students. She hands over her recipe book with a smile as I step into her beat up green sedan. It has all the recipes for that day's class and more.

When we arrive at her home, which doubles as a classroom, I see that the woks are already set on their burners, the kitchen utensils and ingredients already placed at the ready. We will spend most of our time with demonstrations and our own cooking, not preparing our workspace.

Demonstrating the safe way to light a gas element, Yui shows herself to be a demanding cook and a joker. "You burn hair, no problem," she says. "You burn garlic, you fail the course." We smile and crowd around for the initial cooking lesson.

First up: phad thai. Tofu, garlic and spring onions fly into the wok and we learn how to tell the difference between too much and not enough oil. Chicken, noodles and egg come next, added separately, combined effortlessly, cooking all the while, and we have the final product.

A ladle of water over dry noodles to stir-fry them and the use tamarind paste in, well, anything are particular revelations for me and I go confidently away, prepared to make my noodles.

I burn the garlic. The element is too hot and stir-frying is a lot quicker than grilling a piece of meat or simmering a stew. My noodles turn out okay, though, and we carry on with the course.

The class proceeds to make spring rolls, green curry, hot and sour soup, stir-fried chicken and cashews, and sticky rice with mango. Yui watches us go through each recipe after her demonstration, giving instructions when necessary.

"You need more oil; see the pan? It's too dry."

"More water here."

"Your element is too hot. You'll burn the garlic."

She even show me how to wrap my spring rolls and helps me re-wrap when I try one on my own. As the day progresses, there are fewer mishaps: not so many burned ingredients; less smoke rising off the woks. The cooks chop faster and learn they can't look away from sizzling food. All the dishes turn out tasty.

We go to the market at the end of the day. Yui shows us all the foods from the recipes and tells us about a whole lot of others. I learn that galangal is a similar idea to ginger and that vendors sell types of rice that sometimes differ only in how long ago they were harvested.

Our guide also takes questions.

"Is oyster sauce here different from the stuff in China?" asks Eugene, from London.

"No, same same... but different," smirks Yui through our guffaws. We just got her to utter the biggest English-language cliche in South East Asia and she knows it.

Oyster sauce, like any other sauce of course, has the same ingredients but a different mix of them depending on the brand or the country.

We continue on, smelling different varieties of basil, asking about morning glory, eyeballing huge tubs of curry paste. We see the different kinds of rice noodles - this kind for soup, that one for phad thai. We learn that some restaurants use citric acid, sold in baggies one would expect to see a goldfish in, rather than lemons or limes for flavour in some dishes.

I have always loved strolling through markets, though never really know what I am seeing. Now I do.

About an hour of learning to shop like a local leads us to the end of our day. We stand around thanking Yui for her trouble. She thinks of the effort as nothing at all.

"I enjoy cooking. I want everyone to enjoy it too."

We have, and all of us now have more cooking skills and a taste of Thai culture to bring home with us. Hopefully, I've learned not to burn the garlic.