There’s something so reassuring about Thai culture. The aura of calm enfolds, and friendliness and kindness immediately encourage a positive mind and attitude.
And those qualities are what are needed when embarking on learning a new skill. Culinary expert Ru Herd has all the factors in abundance, with a healthy helping of patience thrown in to for good measure. She needs it too, when teaching the wonderfully creative skill of cooking.
Ru has more than 20 years of teaching under her belt after leaving her home in Thailand to gain a BA Hons in hotel management from Queen Margaret’s University in Edinburgh.
And it’s Scotland’s capital where she now runs her fantastic Krua Thai Cookery School, which this year was one of the highlights of the city’s Fringe Festival.
The festival dubbed “the world’s greatest platform for creative freedom” is loved for its mixture of shows and events and the opportunity to learn a new skill was a welcome one.
Two hours of brilliant instruction, cooking, fun and food are on the menu at Ru’s. With her infectious personality and incredible knowledge, Ru puts you at ease as soon as you enter the cookery school and are met with a traditional Thai welcome.
Housed in a beautiful old traditional house, the school welcomes students from around the world who stay with Ru as they perfect their skills.
The Fringe event was designed as an introduction to Thai cookery which is based mainly on the ability to mix flavours well to bring out the best of ingredients.
In Ru’s impeccably set out dining room and a cup of calming Thai tea in hand, you could sit for hours as Ru tells you about her incredible life and career, which has seen her work for many top hotel chains and with legendary chef Albert Roux.
As well as teaching, Ru works with food development and also cooks at private events such as Wimbledon, wowing with simple, but delicious dishes.
Her secret is making sure all the flavour combinations work and understanding what makes a dish as well as how to present it too. Ru is also an expert in fruit and vegetable carving, a Thai must for making the dish looks so exotic and colourful!
For the Fringe, Ru used her professional kitchen to show how to prepare, make and serve Laab-e-Saan (hot and sour salad with mixed leaves), Giew Hang (won-ton with minced pork or mushrooms for non-meat eaters, and soya sauce), plus Kaw Pad (fried egg rice). Recipes are laminated to take home and recreate too.
All simple dishes, but by combining the best and freshest ingredients, they are wonderfully tasty and easy to make at home, something Ru thinks is important, especially in today’s time limiting world. Ru uses ingredients easily found in supermarkets and shows how to prepare and combine to present mouth-watering dishes.
It’s her desire to make sure everyone is well fed that has led to Ru giving up part of her spare time to work with the homeless In Edinburgh. This, along with her incredible people skills, makes the culinary whizz a real gem in the Fringe Festival.
For more information on Ru’s cookery classes, private dining and outside catering, please visit: www.kruathai.co.uk.
Author Bio:
Rebecca Hay is an experienced travel writer and member of The British Guild of Travel Writers. Follow her adventures with her family
Photograph courtesy of the Krua Thai Cookery School
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