Loads of coconut, chili and a dash of fun

By Liu Jun | China Daily | Updated: 2007-03-15 06:41

Jaruwat Fuangfoo manages the Baan Thai cookery school in Chiang Mai and runs its website. Liu Jun

Though not a gourmet, I just had to have a go at Thai cuisine during my stay in Chiang Mai.

I chanced upon the Baan Thai cookery school online and a phone call soon had a van pick me up to take me to a two-storey wooden house near the Thapae Gate.

My classmates were Nilath and Udarie Jayamaha from Sri Lanka. We chose four dishes and our instructor Yanika Manop (nickname Kung) drew up a shopping list. Armed with a basket, we walked to the Sompet Market nearby.

It was a busy Monday afternoon: Pickles, fresh pork, chili of various sizes and colors and fish sauce filled the aisles. Big black barrels of fresh coconut milk were everywhere. "Coconut milk is the base of most dishes here," explained Kung.

Back at the school, we sat on mattresses, preparing the ingredients under Kung's instruction, who studied mass communication at a Bangkok university but came back to Chiang Mai to work at the school. "Teaching cooking is what I enjoy the most," she said.

After much chopping, frying and stirring, dinner was ready.

"People work together and we always talk," said Jaruwat Fuangfoo, who maintains the Baan Thai website.

Near his computer hung a painting featuring a woman carrying green vegetables on shoulder poles, several young men playing with bamboo toys and women inside a courtyard chopping vegetables and attending to the cooking pots.

The young manager in his late 20s majored in computer engineering. "Traditionally women cooked. Now I'm cooking!" he exclaimed with a broad grin.

Fuangfoo said he planned to open a new cooking school on a suburban farm where guests could grow their own vegetables. Ever since a foreigner opened the first Thai cooking school a few years ago, several others have appeared in Chiang Mai. But "they are all serious, like in university," said Fuangfoo. "We teach like we are friends or neighbors who have come over to our house to share our experiences in cooking."

Five years ago, Fuangfoo's elder sister Maew, who started the business in 1999, died from cancer. She had a dream: To make foreigners enjoy Thai food. Fuangfoo promised to fulfill her dream.

"Thai food is a culture on its own. It's part of everyday life, it's like we are breathing," he said.

(China Daily 03/15/2007 page19)