Tel: 020 7631 4590

Learn to enjoy cooking and become a confident cook - or, if you can cook already, come along and expand your repertoire. In each class a three-course meal is taught with plenty of hands-on practice. In this highly structured course each session focuses on mastering fundamentals and techniques and acquiring and building on necessary skills. These are learnt and reinforced as you cook your way through the 6 week course. The emphasis is on delicious food that is quick and simple to prepare but will impress your friends and family!

As with all our classes, the idea is to have fun and enjoy good food. The food cooked during each class is served up for tasting, accompanied by wine. We also provide recipe cards to take away with you.

Session 1   
Learn what a great tool your oven is by making a delicious roast crispy chicken and roasted root vegetables for the main course.  Then continue to develop your oven skills with a lesson in breadmaking – easy when you know how!  The beautiful bread rolls that you make will accompany a simple green salad dressed with a homemade dressing – you will be taught the principles of mastering good dressings.  The dessert reflects our ethos of seasonality with baked apples in winter, peaches or other fruit in the summer – always served with mascarpone.  This is the perfect prepare in advance meal and no one would ever know that you were a novice cook!

Session 2
Make a fantastic roast tomato soup and build on your knowledge of bread making with an olive and rosemary foccacia – you can of course use this principle to master all kinds of variations on foccacia breads. Learn to love the grill in your oven by making a delicious spicy grilled prawn dish which is served with perfectly cooked rice. We will teach you a trick or two for this - along with a green salsa - starting to build  up your repertoire of sauces and salsas. Learn how to grill on your hob by making a dish of mediterranean grilled vegetables.  Finish the session with a sweet, smooth creme caramel with which you can impress your friends!

Session 3
Get your taste buds racing with homemade humous, flavoursome Middle Eastern salads and flat bread – building on your breadmaking skills of the first two lessons.  Learn how to cook a lamb tagine with perfect cous cous or 'Persian' rice, then bake a delicious and moist almond and orange flower water cake for dessert. Throughout we will be reinforcing techniques and skills learnt in preceding lessons to build your kitchen confidence!

Session 4
This lesson focuses on Mediterranean food where you will delve into dips with crudités, learning to pair seasonal salad and vegetables with a variety of versatile dips - great for many occasions. Having acquired bread making confidence over the past lessons, you will create your own perfect pizza with various toppings. Learn the easy art of ice cream making at home based on a real custard by making a delicious real vanilla ice cream served with a rich chocolate sauce.

Session 5
This lesson starts by learning how to make the perfect welsh rarebit. Then learn how to make a fish pie topped with crispy mashed potatoes.  This session finishes by learning to make a classic victoria sponge cake with a lemon curd filling – a perfect ending for a meal or as part of an afternoon tea.

Session 6
This session focuses on different toppings for pasta from tomato, through puttanesca and Bolognese, to crab, you’ll have lots of recipes to add to your repertoire. You will also make a most delicious mushroom soup and finish the session with a homemade lemon cheesecake – the perfect make in advance pudding.

At the end of this course you will have six (or more) great make in advance meals that will involve you in very little cooking during the meal, giving you plenty of opportunity to enjoy a good meal along with your guests.  Get a date in the diary and invite your friends round for dinner…

Master some areas of cooking that are often considered tricky and pick up some fabulous recipes along the way. In this course, you will gain a really good understanding and overview of each topic covered. Take the opportunity to ask all the questions you've always wanted to ask and try out our foolproof techniques for yourself.

After trying out the techniques, you get to eat the food cooked during the class (sufficient for a light meal), accompanied by wine. We also provide recipe cards to take away with you.

Session 1 - Meat and Poultry
Learn how to choose your meat and which cuts of meat best suit a particular type of cooking. You will make grilled duck breasts with a fresh orange sauce, braised guinea fowl, roast beef and yorkshire pudding, a delicious Provencal lamb stew, chicken liver pate, and also learn how to spatchcock and grill chicken.

Session 2 - Bread
You will learn the key techniques needed to bake beautiful bread. Once you have been shown how to mix, knead, rise and prove your dough, you will be able to make a basic white bread, granary bread, a traditional chollah, cinnamon bread, spicy hot cross buns, wheaten bread, fruit muffins, pancakes and scones.

Session 3 - Fish and Shellfish
Learn how to choose the freshest fish and prepare it for cooking. From grilling to poaching, steaming to frying, you will master the various methods of cooking fish. In this class, you will make a calamari stew, pollock with black butter, moules mariniere, baked sole, griddled scallops with oriental dressing, grilled prawns with green salsa and fish cakes.

Session 4 - Cakes
We are very excited to announce that we are now running our cake class in collaboration with Baking Mad. Learn the most important rules for successful cake baking and acquire a lovely and varied cake repertoire. This class includes a devil’s food cake, a chocolate and almond cake, an orange cake, basic sponge cake, honey cake, carrot cake, fruit cake and a lemon cake. Take home a Baking Mad goodie bag and for recipes, hints and baking tips head to www.bakingmad.com 

Session 5 - Sauces
You will make a variety of sauces, both savoury and sweet, to accompany the other recipes you have learned. You will make rich chocolate sauce, confectioner’s custard, creme Anglaise, puttanesca sauce, tomato sauce, bechamel sauce, green salsa, pesto, sauce Bearnaise, sauce Hollandaise, a red wine reduction, an aioli and a mayonnaise.

Session 6 - Pastry
In this class, you will master the techniques needed to be able to make perfect pastry. From choux to shortcrust, from pate sucree to puff, you will come away with all you need to know to make delicious pastry time and time again. During the class, you will make apple pie, vegetable quiche, traditional Cornish pasties, cheese straws, palmiers and profiteroles.

After Everything You Want to Know… our Advanced course offers the opportunity to learn skills that are a wee bit trickier but with know-how become easy and accessible. This hands-on course is based on skills that are regularly requested by students and teaches you expert techniques that you aspire to, along with a wealth of tips and tricks to take home.

At the end of each class, after practising new methods, you will sit down to taste the food with wine, ask questions and recap the lesson. We also provide recipe card packs to take away with you.

Session 1 - Soufflés
Learn the techniques associated with making sweet and savoury soufflés. We will demystify the soufflé – discover and understand how to turn out a soufflé reliably! In the class you’ll make a Cheddar soufflé, twice baked Stilton/Emmental soufflé – a soufflé that can be made in advance, smoked pollock soufflé, double chocolate soufflé made with Valrhona cocoa and chocolate, as well as a prune and Armagnac soufflé. 

Session 2 - Chocolate Making
Start with an across the board tasting of Original Beans, Amedei and Valrhona as well as some of the more popular but more adulterated brands to understand what makes for the best.  Then learn and recognise various techniques including tempering chocolate, perfect for lovely chocolate discs, making ganache for truffles and traditional French rochers. You’ll also learn a fantastic chocolate cake – the lightest of sponges.  Take home a box of chocolates that you have made.

Session 3 - Using Pastry
This session is really about exploring the uses of puff pastry in both sweet and savoury recipes. You will get to grips with the pastry and understand how it works. You’ll make a Provencal tomato tart, Beef Wellington, Parmesan cheese straws, sausage rolls and an apple tarte tatin. You’ll also gain an understanding of short crust pastry and make a seasonal fruit tart with pastry cream and fresh fruit.

Session 4 - Ice cream & Sorbets
All our ice-creams are made by hand; in this session you’ll learn a range of techniques and recipes. Start with a basic vanilla ice-cream and then expand on this by looking at more complex variations; adding flavourings such as honeycomb and chocolate, working with fruit purees, adding brandy marinated fruit and making sorbet. Then prepare a cinnamon and honey parfait with baked figs, a French bombe, using ice-cream and sorbet, an Indian mango kulfi and a baked Alaska – all of which will incorporate your ice-cream making skills.

Session 5 - Pasta & Gnocchi
Learn how to use the pasta machine and make your own hand finished ravioli filled with lemon ricotta and a variety of sauces including wild mushroom and courgette to accompany homemade tagliatelle. Then explore and understand two very different techniques used in gnocchi making – start with potato gnocchi and a sage butter, using a potato ricer, eggs and flour. Then discover chickpea gnocchi and employ a technique similar to when making polenta, where you cook and set the chickpea flour before baking rounds of gnocchi in the oven.

Session 6 - Jams, Curds, Chutneys & Pickles
This session is all about preserving the fruits of the summer. Learn about the consistency and setting of jams and curds, make strawberry jam and plum jam as well as a lemon curd. Then learn about key preserving ingredients, making a basic pickling solution and sterilising. You’ll go onto prepare and make apple chutney, a mixed green fridge pickle and seasonal vegetable piccalilli.

If you fancy yourself as the next Mary Berry then take a look at our short course in baking. This intensive three day series takes you through the key principles of cakes, pastry and bread. Each day you will enjoy a light breakfast of freshly baked goods before setting to work to learn techniques and skills, prepare you ingredients and recipes and cook a varied menu. At the end of each class you will sit down to eat a light lunch and try everything you have made as well as recap the recipes with the chefs.

Day 1: Cakes & Sweet Pastry 
In this session you will make a pate sucrée, a sweet pastry which must be chilled before baking; meringues - understand your egg whites and make delicate macaroons; cakes - explore cake baking, looking at butter cakes, oil based cakes and quick cakes. Take your pate sucrée and turn it into an apple pie and a seasonal fruit tart before finishing the session by preparing and adding the toppings to your freshly baked cakes. Once this is done you will be ready to sit down to eat.

Day 2: Pies & Savoury Pastry 
Our second class focuses on short crust pastry and puff pastry. You will make your own puff pastry and short crust to take home and experiment with further. Using both techniques you will make a vegetable quiche, Cornish pasties and chicken and mushroom pie with short crust, a Provencal tomato tart, sausage rolls, cheese straws and sweet French palmiers with the puff. After all that you will sit down to eat!

Day 3: Quick Breads, Yeast Breads & Croissants 
Starting with quick bread we will delve into the principles of making scones, muffins and cornbread. Learn about yeast breads, this will include making a granary and wholemeal loaf, understand the versatility of white bread and make flat bread, focaccia and pizza dough. Bake a traditional plaited Chollah bread, and lastly, use your learning from day 2 & 3 and roll and make you own croissant. Lunch and a final recap of the three days will conclude the course.