A Floating Cooking Class in Bangkok

© Manohra Luxury Cruises

Good Thai cooking is a careful balance of four distinct tastes: hot, sour, salty and sweet. Take any Thai dish, and you will find varying proportions of these elements coming together in delicious harmony. Or so we learned several years ago at the Thai Cooking School at the Oriental, a gratifying multi-day immersion in ingredients, techniques and keystone recipes that greatly informed our appreciation of this remarkable cuisine.

While we didn’t have time for a refresher course at the Oriental on our latest trip to Bangkok, we discovered a wonderful “floating” alternative. A company called Manohra Luxury Cruises (which is affiliated with Marriott) has assembled a fleet of old rice barges and transformed them into beautifully appointed ships that operate on the Chao Phraya River. Offering dinner cruises as well as longer journeys up the river in very comfortable accommodations, Manohra also conducts one-day cooking classes on the river, and we had the pleasure of taking one of these delightful, informative jaunts.

As promised, the barge picked us up at the bustling Oriental dock after breakfast. Probably beginning life as a modest river transport, it had obviously undergone some work since. Gleaming with polished teak, the ship had a wide, airy deck covered with a fetching rattan structure. Offering shade from the sun, but fully open to the river breeze, it could not have been more comfortable. Our first stop was a riverside market. We shortly found ourselves in the thick of a bustling arcade, surrounded by a kaleidoscopic array of colors and smells you won’t find at a Whole Foods back home. And a note here: The stalls were spotless, the produce fresh, and we detected none of the off-smells that we’ve encountered in markets elsewhere in the world.

Nowadays, it’s possible to find some of the Thai basics in U.S. supermarkets, especially prepared products such as chili and curry pastes and coconut milk in all of its guises. More difficult to find, however, are other staples such as kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal (a garlic-like root) and holy basil. Here they were in abundance: The gleaming lime leaves gathered into clusters, stand-up bunches of lemongrass looking a bit like the displays of spring asparagus back home and coconut milk made right in front of our eyes. Piles of impeccably arranged vegetables were everywhere, as were baskets full of pristine fish, colorful shrimp and prawns, gorgeous purple-blue mud crabs carefully tied up in little packages, carved chickens, bright red cuts of beef, and slices of pale pink pork. Fruits familiar and exotic were also on display: oranges, small bananas, kiwis, star fruit and mangosteens, which are almost impossible to find in the United States but are a big personal favorite. We also browsed stall after stall filled with fragrant flowers, an important aesthetic element of the Thai table. Our chef made no purchases, as all the ingredients for our class were already on board the ship. As soon as we saw the artful array of individual bowls and platters on deck we knew that this would be a memorable experience.

As we pulled away from the dock, the staff provided us with cold water and aprons and told us that we could participate as little or as much as we wished. With that, the chef began reviewing the basics of our first dish, explaining the ingredients, showing us the cooking utensils, and outlining the key cooking techniques. This was done at two well-arranged tables, one with the ingredients, and the other with a gas cooktop. While the chef did most of the work, we’ll admit to jumping in more than any other guest to chop, dice, stir and taste along the way. In all fairness, we were occasionally distracted. The scenery as we plied the Chao Phraya was hard to ignore, from the busy river traffic to the ethereal spires of the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Fortunately, the chef ran a tight ship.

Over the course of the morning, we prepared five dishes: hot-and-sour seafood soup with Thai herbs; chicken in spicy green curry; stir-fried shrimp with cashew nuts and dried chili; sweet potatoes in coconut milk; and spicy pork with chili and lemon sauce. We made enough of each so that as we finished, the dishes were taken below to be held for later, and when the lesson concluded (very conveniently at about lunchtime), the staff asked us to be seated and served us the five-course feast we had just prepared.

Needless to say, it was very satisfying to sit at a beautifully set table and to savor the food we had helped to make with our own modest talents, all absolutely delicious and capturing that critical sweet-sour-salty-hot balance. We arrived back at our various hotels early in the afternoon, well-fed and supplied with an apron and a full set of recipes. We found the entire experience to be delightful, instructive and rewarding, and would highly recommend it to anyone curious to learn more about this stellar cuisine.

Manohra Luxury Cruises 257 Charoennakorn Road, Bangkok 10600, Thailand. (66) 2.477.0770