Published on October 03, 2005

The celebrated chef finally gets his own cooking school, where the aprons are very, very expensive

When it comes to food, ML Sirichalerm Svasti, better known as McDang, has done it all – or has he?

He cooks, he samples cooking, he writes cookbooks. He’s got a TV show, a website and a column in this newspaper dedicated to food, and he endorses a certain brand of instant noodles.

And he eats too!

But at the end of every dinner, it seemed, there was still a dream unfulfilled: McDang always wanted to run a cooking school.

Not so far-fetched – a cooking school run by a celebrated foodie.

The son of top connoisseur MR Thanadsri returned to the Kingdom in 1993, having lived abroad since age 12, and his popularity has been on the rise ever since, primarily through “McDang’s World”, his TV kitchen show. There was demand for some cooking lessons outside the boob tube, but the chef was always too busy.

Until now.

“I’ve wanted to do this for years, and now’s the proper time,” he says. “I’m 52 – maybe I can live another 20 years, but I want to live that 20 years happily.”

Well, he ought to be downright cheerful considering how much money he’s going to charge his students.

The McDang Cooking School is open for applications: two-day courses for Bt25,000. (Anyone in need of a Heimlich manoeuvre?)

But the price, we hastily add, buys a lot. Just 12 students at a time, two classes a month, will learn from the maestro, who will guide them through the preparation of 28 outstanding dishes right in the bosom of his luxurious, 600-square-metre condominium overlooking the Chao Phya River in Nonthaburi.

And McDang can be sentimental when it comes to grub, so he tends to wax lyrical about giving Thai families love and warmth (and getting some himself) by ladling out his culinary knowledge.

“It’s not the money I want,” he insists. “It’s me being selfish – I want happiness out of this. And it just so happens that I, McDang, know a lot about cooking, so I want to share it with others.”

His fans know that McDang makes cooking fun. He’s always relaxed and entertaining.

But his strength as an instructor lies in his insistence on sticking to the principles of cooking. He’s a food scientist, which makes him a cook who knows what a huge difference few degrees Celsius can make in the cooking process. And he knows all the flavourings and tastes and presentations backwards and forwards.

“I’ll focus on teaching my students to understand the methodology and the process, rather than simply giving them a recipe to memorise. Once they understand that, they can apply the knowledge and create new dishes by themselves, which is where the real joy of cooking lies.”

McDang has packed out his spacious flat with no less than three kitchens, equipped with nine ovens. The course, he says, will be multidisciplinary, starting with the careful selection of ingredients at the supermarket and moving into lectures on the principles of boiling, baking and basting, and finally getting into some elaborate demonstrations of the art.

The students will learn how to make different types of soup, sauces and salad dressings, and how to apply different levels of heat and steam to different meats. The science is not always easy, although McDang says no one will get stressed out trying to memorise a text.

Instead, his aim is to demonstrate a systematic style of cooking that students can utilise without having to refer to the cookbook all the time.

“If you really want to know everything about these principles, you actually need more than a year. But I’ve designed a course on the main concepts and principles that can be covered in just 16 hours.”

Though not devotee of cookbooks, McDang initially learned from them himself. He then studied at the Culinary Institute of America and, with friends, ran a successful restaurant called the Back Porch Cafe.

After nine years he sold his stake in the Porch and became the “Asian kitchen chef” at Florida’s Reach Resort. He spent four years there, until coming home to assist his father.

“No one can write a recipe that guarantees great taste 100 per cent of the time because cooking needs experience, attitude and a firm knowledge of the raw materials, more than a good recipe.”

In the end, McDang says, the students will have a chance to try to show what they’ve discovered with a “funky-style” dinner party at the school to which they can invite their loved ones as guinea pigs – er, guests.

Next year he plans to launch another two courses, one on Thai cooking for adults and one on general kitchen mischief for kids.

“I want to encourage both boys and girls to be involved with cooking,” he says. “It’s much better than letting them get involved in nonsense activities.

“For me, I was studying international relations, and when I was introduced to cooking it was like someone turning on a light. I knew right then that I belonged in this business.”

Juthamas Cholthavornpong

The Nation

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