Lemongrass and a touch of nerves

Financial Times September 18/September 19 2004
 

Sarah Woodward, in Bangkok, sings up for Thai cooking class and finds a new respect for curry paste in a jar.

Just occasionally good can come from a conversation with a fellow passenger on a plane. Flying in for my first visit to the teeming city of Bangkok, I found myself sitting next to Karl Steppé, the man behind the international set of Blue Elephant Thai restaurants. A long-term Bangkok resident, he gave me the best possible tip approach the city in short bursts. He was right: once I had “done” the Royal Palace along with rather a lot of wats (and the shopping had begun to pall), I wad delighted to retreat from the hustle of the city into the cool of a colonial mansion to spend a morning learning to cook an authentic Thai curry.

For my attempt to broaden my culinary skills, I was joined by three SAS cabin crew stranded without a plane and a very cool textile importer from Pakistan who came under the guise of “Monty”. Good cooks start early – we had gathered at 8.30 in the morning at the elegant white stucco-fronted turn-of –the-century house for our first assignment, a visit to the local market.

First thought came a glass of freshly squeezed juice alongside a delicate silver tray of dried prawns, sliced ginger, crushed peanuts, sliced green chilli and silver of fresh

lime. Choose your selection, wrap in a bright green leaf and chew. The theory was the same as the Indian paan but the result infinitely zingier. And, like paan, it is something rarely offered to tourists in restaurant

Then it was a short stroll to the Skytrain and one stop to Bang Rak morning market. It sits just round the corner from the classic Bangkok landmark of the Oriental Hotel, yet if our teacher, Nooror Somany-Steppé, hadn’t led the way through the back alleys I’d never have known of its existence. It was a great beginning – to be takenround a bustling local market with someone to explain how the peculiar fruit and vegetables are prepared gives a true indication of how life is lived in the city. We were particularly fascinated by the huge variety of fish on offer, though we didn’t envy the man whose daily job was to prepare squid all morning.

Back at school, we went upstairs to watch Nooror prepare the first dish of he day: chicken satay. With teacher’s permission we five pupils soon abandoned our desks to gather round the brightly lit granite workshop as she showed us how first to slice and then thread thin pieces of chicken on to the traditional wooden skewers. Simultaneously she boiled up a seemingly vast list of ingredients for the peanut sauce.
 

Strong tastes, skilled handed:
The picturesque elegance
of traditional Thai cooking

It soon became obvious though that her shopping in the market was a ploy – everything had been neatly prepared and laid out in advance – though she did give us a taste of pink and spiky dragon fruit that had mesmerised the SAS crew at one stall. There was also no need to take notes as we were provided with a detailed folder of everything we would be learning to cook that morning.

Just as I was relaxing I realised that I had failed to absorb the next stage of the course: we were expected immediately to recreated Nooror’s beautifully presented effort “Come on”, she clapped her hands, leading us across the corridor to a gleaming kitchen with two bar of separate cooking stations, “your turn now”. Only the experienced Monty, who was halfway through a five-day course, looked calm. My nerves increased when at the end of my attempts to prepare a marinade my name was placed under my dish of surely too thickly sliced chicken. It may have been a break from Bangkok hustle but not from tension – would it all end in a judging session?

Then it was off to the classroom again to watch Nooror whip up a red curry paste (“it should technically be made with a pestle and mortar but I usually use the liquidiser”)

followed by  a followed by a chicken red curry stir fry (“this is village food rather than royal Thai cuisine – but it is very practical). The hectic pace went on -  we learned how to cook yam woon sen ( a vermicelli salad to those in the know), menam chicken soup and (my favourite) prawn curry with jack fruit.

As the pressure in the kitchen increased, glasses of lemongrass syrup delicately decorated with an orchid were produced. There was little time to drink, however, as Nooror patrolled our stations, tasting, poking and advising as we cook – useful tips included “always use the back of the spoon to flatten the curry paste as it cooks in

oil” and “make sure you bring the coconut milk to the boil very quickly or it may separate”. So that’s why my Thai soup always curdles at home.

At the send of it all we trooped rather exhaustedly downstairs for lunch. And then I realised the reason for all the name tags under each dishes, my own lumpy satays, hanging grotesquely off their skewers, were set before me.

In adversity, though, we had boned as a tem and after congratulating me on my peanut sauce (he was only being nice – he had seen those satays) Monty was soon proudly making me taste his chicken soup (“I think I got the balance of tamarind and fish sauce right this time”). Meanwhile the SAS team chattered happily about just what to buy in the market the next morning to take back to Denmark and Sweden.

But although they discussed pestles and mortars, jars of coconut milk and different kinds of dried shrimps and chillies, when we went back upstairs to collect our vast vacuum packed sachets of ready prepared Thai sauce, from Massaman to green curry paste. They presumably weren’t worried about their baggage allowance for the raw ingredients; it was just that, like me, they had absorbed the fact that work food is much easier to cook if someone else has done at least some of the work for you. At least after the course I would have a better idea what to order – in a restaurant.

Detail
Info: Sarah Woodward was a guest of the Blue Elephant Cookery School and Restaurant, 223 South Sathorn Road, Yannawa, Bangkok 10120. There is a choice of morning or afternoon courses, at Bt 2,800 (£38) pre person. (Morning is essential if you want to include the market visit.) Tel +66 2-673 9353, or e-mail: cooking.school@blueelephant.com
For futher details go to www.BlueElephant.com