“because we like Thai food” says Ricky, admitting his cooking skills amount to heating spaghetti sauce and boiling pasta.

While I love Thai food, my skills at preparing it are limited to making packets of instant Thai noodles.

Sandra Steppe, a cheery Thai-Belgian whose mother is Blue Elephant’s founding partner and director, y-Steppe, offers us a welcome drink of refreshing lemongrass ice tea.

 “We boil it with fresh lemongrass stem,” says Sandra, who is studying under tutelage to be a teacher, too. “When you see your mother cooking for over 20 years, it kind of grows on you.” She says.

Morning classes include a visit to a traditional Thai market, Bang Rak. A quick Skytrain trip and we are immersed in the dimly lit, bustling bazaar. “No foreigners come here,” says Sandra.

“Lanes are narrow, people are shouting. You are in their territory.” It is indeed the real thing, not tidied up or brightened for visitors.
At the jackfruit stand, we sample tasty silvers of the orange fruit and see unripe mangoes, plump green ovals that are delicious in salads – very crunchy, says Sandra. At the spice stand are bags of garlic, shallots and dry chillies, all used in curry paste. “Green curry is spicier than red, because fresh chillies are used, whereas red curry uses dry, “ she explains.
 

THE COOL CONFINES OF A CENTURY-OLD, mango-hued mansion in Bangkok belie  the bustle of activity within. Each morning and afternoon, visitors from around the world gather at the Blue Elephant Cooking School and Restaurant near the Surasak Skytrain station to learn a little about the art of Thai cooking – Royal Thai cuisine, to be precise.

This sultry Monday morning, students from England, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Canada and the US have come together to learn a little more about a common love of Thai food.

 
Darren Maynard, a professional chef from London, who saw the course advertised on the internet, plans to take lessons for a week “I’ve tried Thai recipes, but always improvised,” he says. Ricky Lau and Lily Ng from Hong Kong are taking the class

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Since then, 11 more of the elegant Thai restaurants have opened around the world, including in London and Paris, and more are planned. The Bangkok venue opened in 2002.

Short, red-tinted hair framing her beaming face, Khun Nooror begins softly: “Thai cooking is very easy,” she says. “The key to success is getting the right herbs.” During today’s class, we’ll prepare green chicken curry (gaeng keaw wan gal), green papaya salad ( som tam), sour and spicy prawn soup ( tom yam kung) and stir-fried rice noodles (pad Thai).

All the ingredients are set out on her workable, while a slanted mirror above allows the students to watch her work. First we’ll make green curry. The base of this tasty dish is green curry paste. Khun Nooror deftly combines the ingredients in a mortar, pounding the lemongrass, then adding galangal slices, coriander root, fresh green chilli peppers and kaffir lime skin. “Very important,” she says.

 “Chefs today don’t make their own curry paste,” says Khun Nooror. “I make it because my mom taught me from when I was nine years old. It’s in my skin to make it.”

When she passes around the stone mortar of flavour-packed paste for us, all the culinary aromas of Thailand waft into our nostrils.

At the traditional Thai coffee and tea stall, Melissa volunteers to help make the ice teas, pouring the tea through a long, old-fashioned filter. There is even a coconut-milk stall, where fresh coconut is soaked in water, then put in a machine and compressed with the milk finally squeezed out into a bucket, “just like cow’s milk”, says Sandra.

Another stand has wild ginger, kaffir lime fruit – that to me looks like a knobby lime-green golf ball – galangal, fresh lemongrass, and purple-leafed banana flowers used in salads, baby aubergines, tiny eggplants, sweet basil and holy basil.

Back at the school, our theory class is about to begin. But we are stranded by monsoon-like rains, quite uncharacteristic during this normally dry season. “This is the Indiana Jones cooking class,” says Sandra, as we dash through the downpour for the shelter of taxis, then drip our way up the school’s stairs.

Khun Nooror waits patiently to pass on her trade secrets in the theory lesson. Like a small Thai chilli that packs a punch, she is petite yet powerful.

She opened the first Blue Elephant restaurant 20 years ago in Brussels, with her husband Karl Steppe and other partners.

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The curry is ready, poured into a royal-blue bowl and garnished with red chilli slivers and sweet basil leaves. After sampling the delicious dish, it‘s our turn to prepare it. Donning Blue Elephant aprons, we enter the school kitchen.

Each student’s tray it set up with all the ingredients, including prepared curry paste, and assistants are there to help if needed. Before I know it, I’m cutting eggplants and adding them to lime juice. Then with a gentle nudge and an encouraging smile from chef Poul, I ‘m breaking up kaffir lime leaves and removing their stems, cutting red chilli slivers and saving some for décor. The room is abuzz with students chopping, slicing, stirring and creating. If I get confused, Khun Poui is there to guide me: more coconut milk, stir, but not too much. Add the chicken, then the baby eggplants that look like peas, put the lid on, cook for two minutes.

Ricky, despite his claims of not being able to cook, looks quite the master, chopping and stirring, following his recipe like an old curry hand. Suddenly, the dish is finished, and Khun Poui is guiding me with the garnish and supplying a label, so we can eat our creation for lunch later.

Three more dished are on the itinerary today and the morning passes in a pleasant blur of activity, from watching the masters at work to preparing the dishes later under their expert guidance.

 With each dish, Khun Nooror offers tips and techniques. When making Tom Yam Kung, she explains: “We use chicken stock rather than fish stock to avoid the fishy smell.” While our recipe calls for headless and de-veined prawns, Khun Nooror shows the Indonesian students how to use the fresh prawn head. “Most Europeans get sick with this, “she says grinning. “But Asians love the taste.”

Now it‘s our turn to cook again. Darren is in his element and very impressed with the course. “Once you’ve done it, it sticks in your head,” he says. “There’s nothing like doing to learn.”

I am less confident, but when I tackle the pad Thai, I ‘m more comfortable, lightly tossing eggs, prawns, rice noodles and flavourings in the work. Chef Poui seems pleased with my progress.

Out comes the saucepan, into which the paste, coriander seeds and other ingredients are added. “If you don’t like curry too spicy, you can cut out the seeds from the chillies before adding them,” says Khun Nooror. “But my sister says: ‘You eat green curry not spicy, it ‘s not green curry.” 

While she talks, she prepares the curry on a little stove, turning paste into thick sauce, adding fresh chicken, eggplant and other Thai delights. “The best judge of your cooking is not me, it ‘s you,” she says. “If you like salty, put more fish sauce,” she advises, adding several drops. “Thai people eat this with rice or noodles. I used to eat it with spaghetti in Brussels.”
 

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In the mortar, Khun Poui pounds garlic, bird’s-eye chillies, dried shrimp, roasted peanuts and tomatoes, pounded not crushed. Palm sugar, lime juice and fish sauce help create the piquant flavour. He hacks at the peeled papaya with a sharp knife, making perfect strips.

Later, when it’s my turn to make it, Khun Poui shows me how to use the pestle to stir the mixture, not pound. “It‘s much more efficient,” he says, smiling.

Then it’s lunch time and we are seated in the Blue Elephant’s cool, wooden interior dining room with our creations in front of us. Melissa tastes her tom yam kung. “It’s good,” she exclaims, surprised. More to point, Ricky says “I loved it. I can now eat my own cooking.”

I take my dish back home to my husband, a Thai food lover. “Well?” I ask, after watching him munch several mouthfuls. “It’s the best Thai salad I’ve ever tasted,” he says, sighing happily. Forget the certificate, the proof is in the papaya salad.

He shows us how to make a nest for this dish, using fluid, elegant movements. He breaks eggs together into a bowl, cracking them together like sumo wrestlers’ heads, whisks this lightly and passes the liquid through a sieve. Khun Poui dips his fingers in the batter and delicately sprinkles the mixture into the oiled frying pan, making a kind of lattice pattern with delicate dribbles. A student, Rebecca, tries. She seems pretty confident, deftly dripping the batter across the pan with chef Poui’s assistance. With tiny chopstick, he gently removes the nest from the pan and drapes it over the Pad Thai. Nothing to it, right?

Last, but not least, is the green papaya salad. “We use a wooden mortar rather than a stone one, to keep the ingredients crunchy, not crushed,” explains Khun Nooror.