Many students become regulars at the feast–cum–cooking lessons in Linda Stephen’s Northumberland studio. The author of several cookbooks and an instructor at the Bonnie Stern School of Cooking, Stephen prepares no fewer than six dishes over the course of a three-hour lunchtime lesson. A recent class focused on Thailand’s Chiang Mai region, in which Stephen whipped up a spicy cashew salad, son-in-law eggs, rice noodles with beef and spinach, grapefruit salad, steamed fish pudding, jungle chicken curry, rice and peas with garam masala, crisp pickled vegetables, fruit with ginger lemon grass syrup, and Samui seabreeze cocktails.