Thai Cookery School

Living in Thailand December 1986

In a quiet, cool room by the river the gentlemen from Japan are bending low to smell the jasmine-scented water. They turn appreciatively towards their translator who explains the process. The jasmine flowers are marinated in the water for two or three days, the petals changed every eight to ten hours so that only the freshest essence is extracted. The water will be used for doughs and Thai desserts.

Chalie Amatyakul, our patient teacher, fields the questions from all sides on every aspect of food.

The Observer correspondent sips her morning coffee: she’s been following the British royal couple around China for the past week or so and the Oriental’s relaxed, innovative Cookery School is exactly what she needed to wind down.

On her separate burner, Sarah Brown – a whole food author and British cookery teacher in her own right – gets to try out various vegetarian adaptations of Chalie’s precise recipes in the Oriental’s lovely brass woks. Sarah has just finished a whirlwind tour of Australia and New Zealand, promoting her many books and drumming up some television work.

The Filipina lady is busy sniffing the array of spices and herbs, grated, chopped, crushed and pummelled, in the preparation trays. She wants to open her own Thai restaurant in the Makati area of Manila. She’s spent a week looking for a cook to go back with her, an old friend of the family who’s since retired to a monastery and become a nun.

Chalie tells us the Latin tag for bai ka prow – balsam leaves – ocinum sanctum. He differentiates between these and bai horabha – basil leaves – ocinum basilicum. The translator translates. The Japanese gentlemen inhale the fresh herbs and take note.

This is the melting pot of nationalities and interests, languages and food that makes up the Thai Cookery School at the Oriental. As Chalie Amatyakul, the school’s director and a premier Thai chef of impeccable credentials, says: ‘they’re all food-oriented people. They enjoy eating and they enjoy learning. They want an understanding and a knowledge of Thai food.’

Chalie – a diplomat by training – is a chef with many hats. He graduated from Chulalongkorn University a surprising number of years ago, back before any of us care to remember. His English is impeccable, his usage of culinary terms always exact. He spent two years as a scholarship student in France, where he put his taste buds to good use. Then followed two years in Austria where he studied interior design. ‘Mine’s a service-oriented personality. I’ve worked with the Tourist Authority of Thailand, with airlines, in travel agencies and in the hotel business.’

His interest in food goes back to childhood, like all enduring interests. ‘It’s got something to do with upbringing, being the youngest in the family. I was always around cookery and food.’

When Kurt Wachtveitl, the Oriental’s manager and man of new ideas, asked him to take charge of his new pet project, Chalie saw it as a challenge. ‘Teaching is very different. It’s an insight to the needs of other people. You have to adapt what should be given to get your points through. Those mixed-nationality classes need a lot of preparation and concentration.’

The cookery school is truly an asset to the range of services provided by the Oriental. It manages to be intimate yet professionally planned. The week-long course covers background, theory and, of course, the essential practice and tasting. Each day’s class ends with lunch on the terrace beside the majestic Sala Rim Naam, overlooking the river. We sample the morning’s work.

Chalie stresses the unique qualities of Thai cookery while at the same time being informative on its influences and borrowings. The practical part of the class always begins with a close look at the herbs and spices to be used during the course of the morning. How they should be chosen, how prepared, what blends and subtle harmonies result.

‘The clever selection of herbs and spices is the unique quality of Thai cooking,’ says Chalie. ‘Yin and Yang is always present, producing harmony.’

However, as any visitor to the Oriental knows, presentation is as important as preparation. Thai food is ‘for the eyes as much as for the palate and the stomach.’ Chalie sees the need for a renaissance of traditional ways of looking at and preparing food. ‘Nowadays we eat to live: that’s the fast food ethic. The traditional approach is to live to eat.’

Thai cookery ideally should be taught at home, in families. In restaurants, unlike the female-centred home, the male chefs tend to go for spicy, salty, chilli-hot food: food for drinkers. ‘But Thai food shouldn’t be that hot,’ says Chalie, ‘the middle way is always best, in life and in cooking too.’ Thus, this particular has combined with great poise the tenets of Thai thinking and Thai cuisine.

Chalie is up early every morning, painstakingly preparing the day’s class. With only ten to fifteen students he takes care to remember the little niceties and individual attentions that betray the natural teacher and the standards of the hotel he represents. As well as the kitchen work, he has to look after the administration, letters, and receiving visitors from all corners of the globe, all curious to find out more about his unique school.

‘We’d like to see it getting bigger. Advanced courses are planned. Different curricula. In a one-week course you can cover only so much.’

Since a Thai cookery school on this scale, with instruction in English, is relatively rare, there is plenty of room for new projects and developments.

‘I’d like to publish a book. A beautiful coffee-table cookbook with excellent photos and short comprehensive texts. A beautiful, humans sort of book which might bridge the cultural gap.’

Chalie sees this as a concrete objective. Though there are many excellent cookery books on the shelves, his own unique vision along with the Oriental’s renouned expertise in the art of food should make it something worth waiting for.

So far – the school was founded in June – this blend of style and knowledge has been a success. Many Thai people abroad have come back to discover the basics of this most marketable aspect of our culture; people who want to open restaurants in the States. Thai food has become something of a mode among travellers also – every major European city now has its Thai restaurant, each one of which is an outlet for promoting Thailand and its culture. So food is in many ways a stepping-stone to making people more aware of Thailand’s charms and tourist potential. How many people have heard of France initially through its cuisine? Or associate Italy with pasta and its tomato-based sauces? Now the ubiquitous term Thom Yaam Khung is performing the same function.

‘The French love Thai cooking. They find it interesting since they’re attuned to food anyway. But I’ve yet to find a French person who can entertain at home outside of French cuisine,’ says Chalie. ‘People are put off by the time-consuming chopping and pounding of spices but good European food demands a lot of peeling and cutting as well. You can still cook Thai food authentically and take a few short cuts – using a food blender, for example. And now a lot of the spices and shrimp pastes are easily available in European markets. Refugees, ironically, are great promoters of their own culture.’

Nonetheless, the Thai Cookery school at the Oriental does not do things by halves. Delicacy, in every sense – preparation, presentation, taste and location – is the hallmark or this burgeoning and aromatic workshop by the river. The Japanese gentlemen go home to their different restaurants that little bit less insular. The restaurant in Makati will have the edge on its competitors. Sarah Brown will be enriched by many new recipes and a whole array of gustatory delights. As Chalie puts it: ‘If one has flair for details and nuances, one can succeed in learning.’ And that he surely has in abundance.