Evening Thai Cooking Class on a Countryside Organic Farm – 6 Dishes

The same organic farm, the same six-dish course and the same four-to-ten guest limit as the morning class — moved to the far better half of the day. You are picked up at 15:30, you cook as the heat goes out of the afternoon, and dinner is whatever you have made.

The class starts with a walk through a local fresh market at its late-afternoon peak. Your instructor teaches you to choose rather than simply recognise: young versus woody galangal, fresh versus tired holy basil, which chilli is heat and which is fragrance, what palm sugar and tamarind bring to a dish. Then it is about twenty-five minutes into the countryside to a school building set in the middle of a working organic farm, with an open-air kitchen and an individual station for every guest.

You walk the garden beds picking your own herbs and vegetables, then cook six dishes chosen from the category pick-lists: soups from rice soup to tom yum, stir-fries from holy basil to cashew chicken, curries from khao soi to green and panaeng, plus pad thai, papaya salad and sticky rice with mango. Three dishes are cooked by the whole group so everyone learns the same core techniques. You pound your own curry paste, make a Thai herbal drink, and learn the school's seven-colour natural rice — all cooked under lights in the open air, which is a completely different experience from a midday class.

Every dish can be vegetarian, vegan and/or gluten-free, spicy or not. Eat on the farm or take it away, a recipe e-book follows, and free transfer covers hotels within 4 km of the Old City. Finish is 20:30.