How to make authentic Thai food: chef’s Koh Samui cooking school teaches popular dishes
- At Jungle Kitchen, Lin Rattana shows guests from all over the world how to create real Thai food, with meals cooked over a charcoal fire
Lin Rattana chops the chilli, ginger and lemongrass at lightning speed as a group of guests looks on eagerly, keen to learn from the chef who grew up in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, where she was taught how to cook by her grandmother.
Today, Lin’s home is the Thai island of Koh Samui, where her culinary knowledge is shared with people from all over the world at the Jungle Kitchen cooking school she runs with her British partner, Tom Charlesworth.
“Listen and watch carefully because you have to make the green curry paste from scratch,” she says to the guests, who will later be tasked with preparing a feast of Thai dishes, including tom kha gai (coconut and galangal soup), kaeng khiao wan (green curry) and som tam (spicy green papaya salad).
What makes Jungle Kitchen stand out from the cooking-class crowd is the traditional way meals are cooked – over a charcoal fire. The only electricity used is for lighting.
On a humid day in June, Charlesworth welcomes guests (up to a maximum of eight) with a cold glass of fresh passion-fruit-infused water, followed by a tour of the grounds during which he gathers ingredients for his partner to incorporate into the dishes.
“The garden is unusually dry,” he says.