What You Actually Cook

The Standard Menu

Most classes give you a menu and you pick one from each category, so the table cooks different things and everyone tastes more than they made.

• Curry — green, red, khao soi or massaman, with the paste ground by hand in a granite mortar. This is the centrepiece and the bit you will actually use again.
• Soup — tom yum goong or tom kha gai.
• Stir-fry or noodles — pad thai, pad see ew, cashew chicken.
• Appetiser — spring rolls, papaya salad (som tam), or fish cakes.
• Dessert — mango sticky rice, almost always.

The Curry Paste Is the Point

If you take one thing home it is this. A paste ground by hand from lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime, chilli, garlic, shallot and shrimp paste tastes substantially better than any jar, and once you have made it once the ingredient list stops being intimidating.

It is also genuinely hard work — expect ten minutes of pounding and a forearm opinion about it afterwards.

The Ingredients You Will Meet at the Market

• Galangal — looks like ginger, is not ginger, and substituting is the most common mistake in Western Thai cooking
• Kaffir lime leaves — the smell that makes a curry read as Thai
• Thai basil, holy basil, lemon basil — three different plants, three different dishes
• Shrimp paste (kapi) — pungent, essential, and the thing vegetarians need to ask about
• Palm sugar — softer and less sweet than cane

Northern Lanna Cooking, Which Most Classes Skip

Chiang Mai is not central Thailand and its own food is different: less coconut milk, more herbs and fermentation, sticky rice rather than jasmine.

• Khao soi — the city’s signature: a curried noodle soup with crisp noodles on top. Some classes teach it as a curry option and it is the one to pick.
• Sai ua — northern herb sausage, lemongrass-heavy.
• Nam prik ong — a tomato and pork chilli dip eaten with vegetables and crackling.

The class at $49 and the Thai-Akha one at $39 teach this repertoire. If you have made a green curry before, this is the more interesting afternoon.

Dietary Notes

Vegetarian and vegan are routine — tofu or mushroom for the protein, a paste without shrimp paste, and soy or mushroom sauce for the fish sauce. Say so when booking. Nut allergies need flagging clearly since peanuts appear in several standard dishes. Spice level is always adjustable and the instructors will ask.

See classes and their menus →