Thai on Trial

olive's Andy Lynes goes in search
of new food skills in Thailand's
Chiang Mai, but is it the low cost
or big bucks course that teaches
him the most?

Chiang Mai, up by the Myanmar (Burma) border, might be Thailand's second city but it should be first choice for every food lover. With markets, hawker stalls and ramshackle restaurants on every street, something truly delicious and astoundingly cheap is available to eat at any time of the day or night. It's also famed for its cooking schools so, although I'm no slouch when it comes to European cookery, I wanted to see what they had to offer a complete beginner, like me, in Thai cooking. As well as a number of luxury hotels, Chiang Mai is still on the backpacker trail so there's something to suit all budgets. I tried out two of its best cookery schools at different ends of the price range;
the well established and reasonably priced Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School and the recently opened Oriental Culinary Academy in the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi hotel.

BUDGET
CHIANG MAI THAI COOKERY SCHOOL (£14)

Sompon Nabnian stands at the front of his cookery school's packed lecture room. In his right hand is a very large, very sharp knife; in his left a tomato. He holds the tomato up in front of him and slowly peels it. As the fruit's skin snakes away from the flesh in one piece he scans the audience and smiles as if to say, 'I could do this blindfolded. As one of Thailand's highest-profile chefs (he's presented his own show The Thai Way for UKTV), Sompon has been running his five-day courses since 1993 and claims his was the first cookery school to open in a city now full of them.

I'm taking Course One, an introduction to Thai ingredients, but there's also a day on curry pastes, vegetable carving, a tour of the market and a tour of a herb garden. Pick and choose or do the lot, a surprisingly affordable option. Sompon is well informed about his subject and rattles off detailed descriptions of more than 20 familiar and not so familiar Thai ingredients with ease. Hearing about the three different types of basil including that holy or purple basil is a hot flavour and should be added to stir-fries at the last minute. Want to know which is the best fish sauce to buy of all those different varieties? 'Just look very carefully at this he says, pointing to the price tag and advising us to just buy whatever's cheapest. Many of the ingredients get passed us to be sniffed or tasted. It's the first time I've ever seen fried turmeric, a rhizome similar to ginger but with an orange color.

After a demonstration of how to make Thai fish cakes, it is time to troop out to the peaceful open-air kitchens to have a go ourselves. His efficient band of assistants watch over as we try to mimic Sompon's deft one-handed fish-cakemaking technique. Scooping up small balls of minced white fish mixed with curry paste and the long green beans I've finely sliced, I press them into patties using my thumbs. I slide them off my fingers and into a wok of hot fat and watch in anticipation to see how they'll turn out. Well, they're not quite as neat as Sompong's, but still utterly delicious, especially dipped into the spicy sauce of sugar, vinegar, chopped peanuts, cucumber and coriander I've knocked up. By the time the course finishes at 4pm, I'll have cooked and eaten a total of six dishes and begin to feel like a real Thai expert.

BLOWOUT
ORIENTAL CULINARY ACADEMY (£54)

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VERDICT: BUDGET OR BLOWOUT?

I learnt a lot from both classes and each course provides some great recipes that will impress your friends back home but Sompong's unrivalled culinary knowledge, charisma and amiable teaching style makes the great value lessons at Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School the winner in my book.

Andy Lynes
olive magazine, U.K.
October 2006