Camilla’s green curry with chicken

Gaeng keow wan gai
Serves 4

2 tbsp frying oil (sunflower or rapeseed)
2-3 tbsp green curry paste
2 cups coconut milk, plus a little extra
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
4 apple aubergines, cut into large wedges
8 kaffir lime leaves, stalks off, torn in half
2-3 chicken fillets, cut into thin slices
4 tbsp fish sauce
3 tsp sugar
1/3 tbsp salt
4 tbsp tamarind sauce
4 long beans cut into 1in pieces, or 15 asparagus beans
20-30 leaves sweet Thai basil
1 large mild chilli, chopped into slanting slices

Heat the oil and curry paste in a pan on a medium heat. Stir the paste well and fry for about half a minute, or until it releases its flavours and your kitchen starts to smell a bit like heaven.

Pour 1/3 of the coconut milk into the wok and bring to the boil. Heat and stir until it begins to reduce slightly. Do the same with another 1/3 of the coconut milk, then pour in the rest.

Add stock, apple aubergines and kaffir lime leaves. Leave to simmer with the lid on for 1 minute.

Add chicken, fish sauce, sugar, salt and tamarind sauce. Simmer with lid on until the chicken is cooked through — a couple of minutes.

Finally add the beans, chilli and basil. Simmer for another 30 seconds.

Serve with rice.

Five more culinary adventures

Coconut curry in Kerala

Bangkok's best street food

Robert Ryan took Michelin-starred chef David Thompson as his guide around Thailand's capital and found the best food

• A food tour of Bangkok

A food tour of Bangkok

Rob Ryan's rundown of the beat eateries begins in Chinatown, with celebrated chef David Thomspon in tow

A wild new cooking school in Italy

A radical new foodie break isn’t just about cooking: it’s a ticket to a lost rural way of life, as Vincent Crump finds out

• Learn to cook in Tuscany

• A family truffle hunt in Italy

Related Links

• Bangkok's best street food

• A food tour of Bangkok

The Malabar coast is India’s spice central, and nobody knows more about gourmet curries than Faiza Moosa, chef-cum-chatelaine at Ayesha Manzil (sundale.com/ayesha), her hilltop colonial villa in Tellicherry. Faiza’s five-day cookery course is big on shellfish plucked straight from the Arabian Sea — her husband will whisk you to the dawn fish market on the beach, around the family cinnamon plantation, then send you out for mangoes straight from the garden. Transindus (020 8566 2729, transindus.com) has a week at Ayesha Manzil, with lessons, from £1,298pp.

Street food in Vietnam

Hoi An is one of the most charismatic little towns in Vietnam, lined with temples, tailors’ shops and terrific little cafes, and home to the Morning Glory Cooking School (hoianhospitality.com), set in an elegant French-colonial townhouse. It’s the brainchild of Trinh Diem Vy, who loves sharing the flavours of her Hoi An childhood with visitors. There are several courses, but we like the Street Food option, starring cao lau, a semi-spiritual pork-noodle dish with a vital ingredient: the local well water. Bales (0845 057 0600, bales worldwide.com) includes a day at the school on its 12-day Tastes of Indochina trip, and you can build in extra cooking time. It costs £2,175pp.

Fritada in Ecuador

Fritada is the signature snack of Ecuador: pig carcasses dangle from hooks along the roadside, and vendors literally hack off hunks of pork, sizzle them in their special cauldron, and serve. Yummy. For a slightly more sophisticated take on the dish, sign up for a three-night crash course in Andean cuisine at Hacienda Rumiloma (hacienda rumiloma.com), outside Quito. The hacienda is surrounded by Amazonian jungle on the slopes of Pichincha volcano, and you’ll learn to garnish your fritada with all the trad trimmings: choclo (Andean corn), avas llapingachos (cheesy potato cakes) and the local aji — spicy tree-tomato sauce. Last Frontiers (01296 653000, lastfrontiers.com) includes the course on a seven-night foodie tour of Ecuador; from £2,490pp.

Pigeon pie in Marrakesh

Who’s the dada? In Moroccan society, it’s the name given to the venerable cook of a wealthy family, tasked with conjuring dishes passed down through generations of her mothers and grandmothers. La Maison Arabe (www.lamaisonarabe.com), in the Marrakesh medina, looks like an Arabian Nights fantasy and has its own dada-led cookery school, offering half-day initiation into the secrets of lamb tagine, chicken couscous and the classic sugar-sprinkled pigeon pie. CV Travel (020 7401 1045, cvtravel.co.uk) has a four-night stay there from £549pp; the prebookable cookery course costs about £50pp, based on a class of four. If that whets your appetite for more Moroccan cooking, consider the three-morning course at Les Borjs de la Kasbah (lesborjsdelakasbah.com), also in Marrakesh.

Beer fish in China

You’re after authentic Chinese food, the stuff the locals eat? How about the Yangshuo Cooking School (yangshuo cookingschool.com), housed in a mud-brick farmhouse in Chao Long village, among the limestone-spiked lakes of surreally scenic Guangxi province. First, choose your produce at Yangshuo’s dynamic produce market, jumping with live chickens. Then spend two mornings handling a hot wok under the tutelage of Leo Wang, flashing together oyster sauce, pickled ginger and wolfberries to produce zingy Guangxi dishes such as pijiu yu — an iconic concoction of fish in beer sauce. Intrepid (020 3147 7777, intrepidtravel.com) has five days in Yangshuo, including the cooking, from £170pp; flights cost extra, bookable through the company from £457. Intrepid also offers longer group-tour options.

Unless stated, all package prices are based on two people sharing, and include flights and transfers

Times recommends

• 30 sunny holidays for April and May
• The complete family gap year guide
• 25 spring days out around Britain