Learning to cook while travelling: cooking classes

For a long time, my souvenirs were the kind that gather dust on a shelf — a fridge magnet from Chiang Mai, a tiny ceramic tagine from Marrakech that has never once held food. Then, somewhere between a market stall and a hot wok, I changed my mind. Now I bring home recipes. And the way I collect them is always the same: a morning at the market with the teacher, an afternoon over a flame, and one dish I can actually cook again in my own kitchen back home.

A cooking class is, to me, the most honest way to understand a cuisine. You don't watch it through a restaurant window — you put your hands in it. You learn why the order of the spices matters, why the paste has to be pounded and not blended, why everyone in the room laughs when you ask whether you can leave out the fish sauce. By dinner you've made something real, and you've made it with people. That double catch — a dish and a human connection — is what I keep travelling for.

The morning belongs to the market

The best classes start before the cooking, at the market, with the teacher leading the way. In Chiang Mai it was a tangle of stalls where my teacher named each chilli by its heat, cracked open a fresh coconut, and made me smell galangal next to ginger until I finally understood they are not the same thing. In Marrakech, a morning in the souk turned into a lesson in itself — preserved lemons, the green of fresh coriander, the long ribbon of a spice merchant explaining ras el hanout, the blend whose name simply means «head of the shop». That walk is half the class: you learn what a real ingredient looks, smells and costs like, so that back home you can recognise it on your own market or in the right aisle. I photograph everything and scribble notes I'd never trust my memory to keep.

« You don't bring home the dish. You bring home the gesture — and the gesture travels in your hands. »

This is, quietly, where a working connection earns its place. I'd booked most of these workshops the night before from my phone, comparing reviews until I found a small, well-rated group. At the market, a translation app smoothed the gaps when my teacher's English ran out and my Thai didn't exist. And all morning I was photographing recipes, pinning the names of spices, looking up what «galangal» is called back home so I'd have a hope of finding it again. None of it was the point of the day — it just kept the day moving.

The afternoon belongs to the flame

Then comes the part you came for. In Chiang Mai, that meant a green curry paste pounded by hand and a pad thai tossed in a wok so hot it roared. In Tuscany and around Bologna, it was fresh pasta rolled until the light came through it, and a pizza stretched by thumbs, not a rolling pin. In Marrakech, a tagine layered and left to murmur for an hour while we drank mint tea. In Oaxaca, the long, patient ceremony of a mole — more spices than I could count — and tortillas pressed and slapped onto the comal. In Hoi An, the herbs of central Vietnam folded into something fresh; in India, a dal and a roti puffing on the flame like a small miracle. Good workshops keep the groups small, hand you the recipes to take away, and — the best bit — end with everyone sitting down to eat what they made. Most will happily run a vegetarian version if you ask when you book.

And then you cook it at home

The real test comes weeks later, in your own kitchen, on an ordinary Tuesday. The first time I made that green curry at home it wasn't quite right — too timid on the paste, the wok not hot enough — but it tasted of the trip, and that kept me going; now the tagine and the fresh pasta are part of my normal cooking. A few honest tips, though: pick a class with real reviews rather than the first one a tout offers you in the street, ask about group size and whether the recipes come home with you, mention dietary needs up front. Treat it as a gift you give yourself — far more alive than a magnet, and it feeds you long after the trip is over.

What to remember

A cooking class is the souvenir you can taste again. The market in the morning, the wok or the tagine in the afternoon, and one dish you'll actually remake at home — that's how you truly understand a cuisine, hands first, with people. Bring back recipes instead of trinkets. Keep just enough connection to book it, translate, photograph and find the spices again — and let the cooking, the laughing and the eating happen entirely in the room.

— Camille, still chasing the right heat for that green curry.