May Kaidee Cooking School – Bangkok

Taught by May herself, this May Kaidee’s Cooking School offers a variety of captivating courses including Thai cooking, raw food, and fruit carving. Our cooking class covered ten recipes, ten courses that you must eat, one by one, each a little more elaborate than the other, each a little richer than the last. May taught our group in her newer kitchen, hidden behind the exquisite masterpiece home of Rama V. The prepared ingredients are laid out and the woks heat in an even circle as they gleam under fluorescent bulbs. In our small class of four, with such idiot-proof designations, it is impossible to fail. May’s enthusiasm never wanes as she guides us through each recipe, subtly turning down the heat and sprinkling water into too-dry woks and insisting you did it yourself. She sits with us while we eat and tastes our dishes, especially the Issan, which she endorses as her fave.

During our class, May was flitting feverishly between teaching and posing for a foreign photo shoot. I think it was for a Cali magazine, but don’t quote me on that. Despite her engagements, we never wanted for attention and barely noticed her absence. Between the idiot-proof kitchen and the simple recipes, May is the slimmer version of Ratatouille’s Auguste, and her cooking school will assure even the weariest egg-boiling failures that anyone can cook. May is slim and beautiful from eating the very recipes we prepared, and her energy fills every room. Despite achieving international acclaim, May seems to genuinely enjoy turning her bumbling foreign hopefuls into adequate Thai chefs. How well I’ve mastered the art of her craft is hard to say, but keep in touch with me, and you’ll know if I’m suddenly looking for non-charred housing.

Our first dish was the Tom Yum Soup. Light broth with a sharp sour-tang, this deceptively clear soup is a stellar starter loaded with carrots and healthy tofu. The baby corn lacks the offensive aftertaste of canned brine, a freshness I have yet to find in the US.

The Tom Kha is made in the same breath as the Tom Yum. It is richer and creamier with the addition of more coconut milk and less water yet its flavor remains ahead of its caloric value. Tom Kha would warm you from the inside out on a cold winter’s day but it made us lose all our water weight in Rama V’s fan-conditioned dining room.

The Issan was a surprising favorite of mine and May’s. The way to eat this dish rekindles my love for sticky rice and sets me salivating every time I think about it. Just use your CLEAN fingers (this is one dinner to which you don’t invite the guy who doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the restroom…) to roll some rice into a ball and dip into some soy/chili-based sauce. Then you dip into your dish, using your fingers to grasp a few morsels of whatever mushroom or tofu or soy protein falls near them. The sticky rice sops up the sauce like a sponge, and after a few bites, eating with your fingers may become a new pastime. Again, make sure your hands are clean. E. coli is NOT a spice.

The Stir-Fried Vegetables is the very essence of standard Eastern stirfry, the backbone of Asian cuisine. Learn to make this dish, and you’ll have an endless arsenal of simple meals for the rest of your life. The combinations of ingredients and sauces are endless, and creativity knows no bounds.

The Pad Thai was our crowning glory. I don’t know how anyone stays thin when one of their staple foods, available on any street corner, consists of sweet noodles with peanut and a hint of lime. The noodles in Thailand have a chewy-but-not-sticky texture, which I’m told stems from being soaked and not boiled. The wok-kissed noodles remain firm, and they give you a feeling of real substance without sticking to your teeth.

When I saw Peanut Sauce on the list of dishes, I thought it was a cop-out, a take-a-break filler involving a spoon and a blender. But this recipe is more than meets the eye. May’s peanut sauce starts with a base of fresh tomato, yet you’d never know it by the time the sauce is done. Ours was judged a masterpiece as the oil was starting to separate. This peanut sauce drowns the Pad Thai in a delightful muddy stream and makes a spirited dipper for fresh spring rolls.

Our Massaman Curry also received May’s generous praise, with its exceptional thick heaviness and deep yellow color. This curry douses May’s crisp brown rice with its almost gritty depth, fluid as the dessert sand. The best part is that May’s recipe books contains an addendum for the sweeter Penang Curry. Just switch a spice and pour a little extra coconut and you’re as golden as your curry.

The Green Curry is a deep sea of treasures full of tasty veggies and healthy spice. The baby corn crunches in its youth, and the pumpkin is a flavorful, clashing orange weight, grounding the jewel-green curry.

The Fresh Spring Rolls are really just veggies rolled in a chewy, impossibly thin wrapper, topped with an artful smattering of peanut sauce. That wrapper is the unsung hero here, marking the line between simple and simply extraordinary. The spring rolls are readily available at produce markets, made in a flash before your prying eyes by a lady with a fistful of dough and flat, fiery-hot griddle. They also make a popular afterschool snack around brittle shreds of colorful cane sugar, my new favorite street food.

Though I feel that only a narcissist would review her own cooking in her own food blog, I wouldn’t mind a little positive reinforcement for advancing beyond boiling pasta so pretend to be impressed. If you’re not impressed, lie. Duh.

All pathologic need for false flattery aside, May deserves her own spread, especially one that covers many of the dishes central to Thai cuisine. May also embodies the spirit of Thailand in the kindness I’ve encountered throughout my trip. She and the people of Thailand are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. Their small acts of kindness have warmed me more than their hundred-degree weather and have choked me up even more than the stifling 100% humidity. Their subtle kindness is manifest in making us wait for fresher waffles at a street stand, keeping our teacups full despite our meager order of one split bowl of soup, and carrying my bag across the railroad tracks at the sight of my struggle. Megabus threw our bags into a puddle in the pouring rain, but the shuttle driver to the Lomprayah ferry placed a tarp on the dusty ground before unloading his cargo hold. The people I’ve met in Thailand have paid attention to the little things. Their kindness has a rare genuine quality, and May is no exception. So if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, someone who loathes meat, a hippie trying to save the world with your diet, or just need a little love during your first adventure in front of a stove AND you’re looking for a cooking school in Bangkok or Chiang Mai enroll with May Kaidee. You’ll get your earthy experience and you may even leave with your eyebrows unsigned.