Thailand loves its food. The country is a gastronomic wonderland of fiery, sour, sweet, gingery, garlicky delectables. Food is available on every second street corner and fills every market, whether it is a plate of pad thai (stir-fried noodles), spicy green papaya salad, a quick satay or tantalising treats for a sweet tooth, it is never hard to find something to eat.
Fine Thai dining, however, isn't in abundance. Enter the Blue Elephant, a European restaurant group and guardian of royal Thai cuisine that has recently opened an upmarket restaurant in Bangkok.
Blue Elephant is not just about indulging. It also has a cooking school, which allows travellers to take home a taste of Thailand.
'Thai food is simple food,' says Khun Noroor Somany-Steppe, co-founder of Blue Elephant and the instructor for the morning's cooking lessons. Dubbed royal for its aesthetics rather than imperial ingredients, the food at the Blue Elephant may not be very different to what you can find on the street - except for its panache, which is said to make it fit for a king.
Lesson No.1 in Noroor's class: use the finest quality and freshest ingredients you can find. We go to hunt down ours in the local fresh food market. Bustling gossip shops where women guard their goods with plastic fans and make an art form of bargaining, these markets abound in Thailand. Although they are being given a run for their money by big supermarket chains, savvy Thais know that, when it comes to fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and meat, the local goods can't be beaten. The markets offer a ready supply of cooked dishes, fresh curry pastes, sauces, condiments and exotic titbits from around Asia.
An aromatic bundle of coriander, a bunch of rosy cherry tomatoes, some juicy king prawns and a plump fish later, and it's back to the beautiful, century-old colonial mansion the Blue Elephant calls home. The first dish on the menu is yam som o, a spicy and tangy yet subtly sweet pomelo salad designed as a cold appetiser. Noroor takes us through the ingredients and method step by step, before sending us off to personal cooking stations where we attempt to re-create it.