Thai cooking for morons

The great philospher Socrates once said ‘Wisest is he who knows he does not know’. If this is true it makes me a very wise person indeed when it comes to Thai cooking.

I had always thought I could throw together an Pad Thai, have a stab at a Thai curry, and I was pretty sure I’d mastered the art of stir fry but my recent experience of a Thai cooking masterclass (at the excellent Time for Lime on Ko Lanta) taught me that I know nothing whatsoever about Thai food. And not just when cooking it: oh no – apparently I’ve even been eating it wrong too. My cheeks were red, I can tell you.

Junie Kovacs, the director and teacher of Time for Lime, is a Norwegian graphic artist, who moved to Ko Lanta in 2001. She divides her time between looking after fledging tourist chefs in afternoon cookery classes and abused animals as part of her animal charity, Lanta Animal Welfare.

Her premises, which at the moment houses both the cheffing and the woofing (kept very separately), is as stylish as you would expect from a sometime designer. In the cookery school an open-plan kitchen with shiny surfaces and minimal fuss reflects a serious approach to cooking, while the eating area at the far end of the room is deliciously casual, with a cocktail bar and steps down onto the beach.

The signature lime green of TFL’s logo is even tastefully picked out on some of the furniture, the aprons that the pupils are given as part of the course fee and, when she emerges to start cooking, Junie’s fisherman trousers and headscarf.

Junie starts by introducing us to the main ingredients of Thai cookery and the three main flavours: sweet, sour and salty, which must be in balance for the depth of flavour to be correct. So far, so interesting, and so all new to me. I’ve always been a student of the ‘throw-it-all-in-and-see-if-it-tastes-good-and-if-not-oh-well school of cooking. This was the big league.

Next Junie told us how to cut the ingredients that you don’t want people to eat. By this point I was a bit lost. Surely cooking is all about eating the ingredients, isn’t it?

Apparently not. Thais don’t just cook things that they want to eat but things that give flavour to the rest of the meal. Galangal, for example, is a slightly horrible-tasting root spice (“like a cross between shampoo and a Christmas tree,” jokes Junie) that gives a pleasant taste in combination with other elements of dishes like Tom Yam (hot and sour soup).

The Thais cut the elements that are not to be eaten in a dish in a certain way (“this is the ‘don’t eat me’ way”) so that people can eat around them. So Galangal is sliced into rounds, lemon grass into diagonally-cut sticks, and kaffir lime leaves ripped from their stalks and left in halves. On other occassions each of these ingredients (known by Junie as ‘The three muskateers’ because they are often used together) are meant for consumption and this will be indicated by the fact that they will be finely chopped instead (“the ‘eat me’ way”).

Gosh – a visual code to indicate edibility! Who would have thought Thai curries and stir fries were so complicated. And here was I all these years manfully (womanfully?) trying to digest lemongrass, and choking down the tough kaffir lime leaves. I hoped the other students didn’t see me blush, although I had noticed a least a couple of sheepish and disbelieving looks from them so assumed I wasn’t alone in my stupidity.

Luckily, the rest of the course passed without me doing anything too stupid and I even managed not to set myself on fire when making stir-fried morning glory, which demands a super hot pan. And – even more amazing – all my food was delicious. This has nothing to do with me and all to do with Junie’s teaching, but I still had a overwhelming sense of pride and I can’t wait (the 8-odd months) to get home so I can try my new skills out there.

Yes. I made this food!

The evidence

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