Thai cooking

"My name Gay. But I'm not gay. Just happy and sexy."

Kae (pronounced "Gay" in Thai) goes through the methods of cooking rice, particularly sticky rice, which is popular in the North. She says that sticky rice is more filling but bad for the waistline. She does a demonstrative pantomime of being hungry and full, finishing with her natural toothy, crazy smile.

After this essential Thai cookery staple we are marched round the local market to buy ingredients. Kae stands before a coloured mountain of produce and shows us a variety of vegetables and roots; thai ginger, ear mushrooms, pea aubergines, chillis in every size and colour - then onto the noodle shop for the wheat noodles, rice noodles and the mung bean glass noodles - and the tofu vendor for a bright yellow turmeric spiced slab.
She gives us free reign to explore the market for a while and I return with some thai donuts and a coconut and banana smoothie; this is to be my first mistake of the day.

We are allowed to choose which dishes we want to make and our small group of 8 is soon interspersed with other small groups depending on what we selected. I start with phad thai; mostly because I want to know what a proper one should have in it; turns out that the khao san road version is missing the tofu and dried shrimps. In comparison it is a bit bland.

Our instructor speaks english softly with a slight lisp and the typically asian loose "R". Her instruction and demonstration is concise and laced with humour; "turn on your station, medium heat- take care your eyebrows!"

We learn that Thai seasoning consists mostly of sugar, fish sauce "for salty" and oyster sauce. We suprisingly never add any soy or chilli powder. Everything is measured into the wok using a metal spatular. When we add the rice noodles they are not boiled first. A small amount of water is added to the wok and the noodles are flash-boiled before being mixed in with the other ingredients.

In the 6 hours that the course runs I also make and eat spring rolls, thom yam, chiang mai noodles and deep fried bananas. Chiang mai noodles are my new favourite dish and consist of red curry paste (which we pounded up from scratch in the morning), Indian curry powder and coconut milk which is then topped off with crispy fried wheat noodles and chopped shallots. It's the fifth dish we make and it's so delicious I eat the whole bowl.

This is a mistake. When we cooked and ate the first dish I was already full from the smoothie, now I'm full to bursting. When the class finishes at four I heave myself up and lurch round the corner to my hostel. Determined not to give the beautifully cooked food the indignity of being puked up into a communal toilet I glug some water and lie down.

Was the food worth the ensuing stomach cramps and the next day's crippling bout of what Dad calls "the shits"? You bet the hell it was.