Half Day Course - Zabb E Lee Thai Cooking School

Zabb E Lee is a small cooking school with its own organic farm, and the half-day class is a five-hour morning or evening of market shopping, farm ingredients and one-person-one-wok cooking. Groups are kept to a handful of people, so it suits travellers who want the instructor's attention and a lot of time at the stove.

The day starts at a local market, where you learn to tell the Thai basils apart and see the fresh pastes and vegetables you will cook with. At the school you take your own wok and work through four dishes plus a curry paste you pound from scratch, and finish with mango sticky rice. Every dish can be made vegetarian or vegan, and you set your own spice level. You eat everything you cook, or take it with you.

The morning class runs from about 09:00 to 14:00 with pickup around 08:30. An evening class starts in the late afternoon. Free pickup and drop-off is included within 3 km of downtown Chiang Mai. Water, tea, coffee, herbal tea, seasonal fruit and a step-by-step recipe book are included.