The Culinary Institute of America

Our guide to the Thai kitchen is chef Khun McDang, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and now host—with his father—of the most popular television food show in Thailand. During a visit to the Culinary Institute campus in Napa Valley, chef McDang prepared several Thai specialties, offering us a rare chance to learn from an expert.

Shredded green mango salad is sour, salty, sweet and hot—a refreshing condiment for fried fish or grilled shrimp. Chef McDang shows us how it’s done:

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From the bustling spice markets of Cochin, India… to vibrant Oaxaca, land of the seven moles….from San Sebastian, headquarters of the daring new Spanish cooking….to magical Bangkok, where sumptuous curries challenge our palates with their bold, spicy flavors…the world of food takes us places beyond imagining. For a chef, every journey brings new tastes, new ingredients, new skills and inspiration. The more we see, the more we grow. Travel with Julie Sahni, the cookbook author and Indian food expert, to the coconut plantations of Kerala and the fragrant spice stalls of Delhi. Meet Rick Bayless, chef, Mexican cooking expert and your guide to the subtle secrets of mole negro. Cook a Catalan seafood paella with paella masters from Barcelona, and learn the elements of authentic pad Thai from one of Thailand’s most eminent chefs. Fasten your seat belt for a whirlwind tour of the world’s best tables.

The signature flavors of Thai cooking lie in its foundation seasonings—the ingredients a Thai cook uses to add sweet, sour, salty or herbaceous notes to a particular dish. Chef McDang leads us through those essential, defining ingredients.

In India, fruit chutneys go far beyond the mango version known to most Americans. Watch chef Abhijit Saha prepare one of his favorite chutneys, made with dates, raisins, spices and pomegranate juice.

Exotic and mesmerizing, India is a land of complexity and contrast, a vivid tapestry of peoples, languages and cultures. Among the oldest civilizations on earth, Indian culture has evolved over centuries, absorbing ideas from the Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Moghuls, Portuguese, Dutch, French and, of course, the British. From the Moghuls, northern Indians learned to make rice pilaf and biriyani, an elaborate layered dish of rice and meat. The Moghuls’ refined cooking became the palace cooking and the dominant influence in the north. In the tropical south, the food is hotter and seafood dominates the coastal diet. The treasured fruit of the coconut palm yields coconut milk for curries and coconut water for toddy, a fermented beverage. From north to south, India offers an endlessly varied feast, befitting its varied geography and multicultural heritage.

Join us as we tour the spice coast of tropical Kerala, where home gardens are a tangle of pepper vines and cardamom bushes and mountain plantations yield coconut, cashew nuts, nutmeg and coffee. We’ll cruise the backwaters of Kerala, past rice paddies, shrimp farms and mango trees. With local cooking teacher Nimmy Paul, we’ll have a private lesson in Kerala home cooking, and we’ll watch the great Kathakali dancers perform in their dazzling makeup.

Moving north, we’ll experience the rich Moghul cuisine and the splendor of the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful tomb ever created, an emporer’s tribute to his beloved wife. In nearby Delhi, we’ll explore the colorful stalls of the market, learning the names and uses for the mysterious vegetables and fruits, lentils, chilies and herbs that underlie this major regional cuisine.

In Jaipur, our culinary tour leads us past Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, a late 18th century example of architectural artistry. And we’ll watch elephants bathing in Moatha Lake outside the fabled Amber Fort, overlooking the great desert plains of Rajasthan.

Together, we’ll uncover the essence of the Indian kitchen as we learn from tandoor masters, market vendors, and specialists in biryani and dosa. In this vast country, with its well-preserved regional cooking and agricultural abundance, we’ll never lack for extraordinary foods to taste.

India is an enormous country, encompassing numerous religions and languages and every possible landscape, from the snow-covered Himalayas to the tropical palm-lined coasts of the south. Likewise, Indian cooking is far from monolithic. To begin to understand it, we must divide India into regions. Suvir Saran, chef-owner of New York City’s Devi restaurant, helps us out.

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With its reverence for old ways but its passion for the new, Spain may be Europe’s most exciting food destination today. On this culinary tour of Northern Spain, you’ll see why Catalonia and the Basque Country are captivating American chefs. Nowhere else will you find such a profound dichotomy between the practitioners of traditional cooking and the advocates for change. Catalonia, after all, is home to the restaurants of Ferran Adria, Juan Mari Arzak and others who are shaking culinary foundations with their daring new compositions. Their foams, emulsions and other ultra-modern creations have pushed Spanish cooking forward and intrigued chefs around the globe.

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Oaxacan women have perfected the art of making mole. Here, Abigail Mendoza, show us the elaborate preparations required to make this classic dish

Abigail Mendoza Ruiz is the owner of Tlamanalli in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, a restaurant specializing in typical Zapotecan foods. At the age of six, Chef Mendoza Ruiz first learned to make tortillas and began to study the foods and beverages of the Zapotecan Indians.

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The glorious city of Bangkok welcomes visitors to Thailand with sights, sounds and smells unique to this energetic metropolis. King Rama I made Bangkok his capital in the 18th century and commissioned the Grand Palace, a landmark compound of royal residences and sacred temples with shimmering spires. But for a food lover, the first stop must be the Aw Taw Kaw market, one of the most exciting food markets in the world. Serious cooks shop here for their tropical fruits and the finest seafood, while serious eaters come for dumplings and fiery curries. Our guide to the Thai kitchen is chef Khun McDang, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and now host—with his father—of the most popular television food show in Thailand. During a visit to the Culinary Institute campus in Napa Valley, chef McDang prepared several Thai specialties, offering us a rare chance to learn from an expert.

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