Full-Day Thai Cooking Class on an Organic Farm – 8 Dishes & Rainbow Rice

Eight dishes, a whole day, a class of no more than ten and an open-air kitchen in the middle of a working organic farm. If you want the complete northern Thai repertoire rather than a taste of it, this is the most thorough cooking day we sell outside the city.

You are collected between 08:30 and 09:00 and the day opens at a local fresh market. The lesson there is selection, not sightseeing: how to tell young galangal from woody, fresh basil from tired, which of the chillies gives heat and which gives perfume, what tamarind and palm sugar are for, how to buy noodles and rices. Then it is roughly twenty-five minutes into the countryside, where the school sits among the herb beds that supply its kitchen.

In the garden you learn how to pick herbs and vegetables properly and gather your own. Back at your station — your own wok, burner, knife and clean utensils — you work through eight dishes: soups from rice soup and coconut milk soup to tom yum and a non-spicy option; stir-fries from holy basil and cashew chicken to fried morning glory and sweet and sour; curries including khao soi, green, panaeng and massaman; plus pad thai, papaya salad, spring rolls, banana spring rolls and sticky rice with mango. Five dishes are cooked by the whole group so everybody learns the same core techniques, and the rest you choose. You pound your own curry paste from raw spices and make your own Thai herbal drinks.

The signature of the day is the rice: this school teaches how to colour rice seven natural shades using plants alone, a technique almost nobody else teaches, and the finished rainbow plate is what everyone photographs. Every dish can be prepared vegetarian, vegan and/or gluten-free at whatever heat you like. Eat it all or take it away, a step-by-step recipe e-book follows, and free transfer covers hotels within 4 km of the Old City. Finish is 16:00.