With each dish, Khun Nooror offers tips and techniques. When making tom yam kung, she explains: “We use chicken stock rather than fish stock to avoid the fishy smell.” While our recipe calls for headless and de-veined prawns, Khun Nooror shows the Indonesian students how to use the fresh prawn head. ‘Most Europeans get sick with this,” she says, grinning. “But Asians love the taste.”

Now it’s our turn to cook again. Darren is in his element and very impressed with the course. “Once you’ve done it, it sticks in your head,” he says. “There’s nothing like doing to learn.”

I am less confident, but when I tackle the pad Thai, I’m more comfortable, lightly tossing eggs, prawns, rice noodles and flavorings in the wok. Chef Poui seems pleased with my progress.

He shows us how to make a nest for this dish, using fluid, elegant movements. He breaks eggs together into a bowl, cracking them together like sumo wrestlers’ heads, whisks this lightly and passes the liquid through a sieve. Khun Poui dips his fingers in the batter and delicately sprinkles the mixture into the oiled frying pan, making a kind of lattice pattern with delicate dribbles. A student, Rebecca, tries. She seems pretty confident, deftly dripping the batter across the pan with chef Poui’s assistance. With a tiny chopstick, he gently removes the nest from the pan and drapes it over the pad Thai. Nothing to it, right?

Last, but not least, is the green papaya salad. “We use a wooden mortar rather than a stone one, to keep the ingredients crunchy, not crushed,” explains Khun Nooror. In the mortar, Khun Poui pounds garlic, bird’s-eye chilies, dried shrimp, roasted peanuts and tomatoes, pounded not crushed. Palm sugar, lime juice and fish sauce help create the piquant flavor. He hacks at the peeled papaya with a sharp knife, making perfect strips.

Later, when it’s my turn to make it, Khun Poui shows me how to use the pestle to stir the mixture, not pound.“ It’s much more efficient,“ he says, smiling. Then its lunch time and we are seated in the Blue Elephant’s cool, wooden interior dining room with our creations in front of us. Melissa tastes her tom yam kung. “It’s good,” she exclaims, surprised. More to the point, Ricky says “I loved it. I can now eat my own cooking.”

I take my dish back home to my husband, a Thai food lover. “Well?”, I ask, after watching him munch several mouthfuls. “It’s the best Thai salad I’ve ever tasted,” he says, sighing happily. Forget the certificate; the proof is in the papaya salad.