Classes
Read on for all the latest news and information on our cooking classes and courses. Find out about new classes, chef spotlights, behind the scenes insights and much more!
Gain Comfort in Comfort Food
Comfort food is food that provides a feeling of well-being, the dishes are typically high sugar or carbohydrate content and tend to be associated with childhood or home cooking. Not all comfort food is bad for you, our Founder Ros believes that homemade comfort food can be healthy as recipes can be easily altered for example reducing the salt content.
Comfort food favourites
In the UK research has shown the simple and classic pizza is the number one comfort food!
Latest News – 2nd Lockdown November 2020
Having re-opened on 1 September after making our Little Portland Street kitchens as covid-secure as possible, we were able to run courses and classes and were constantly told by students that once they entered our kitchens, they felt safe and were surprised how they relaxed and enjoyed cooking with us. With the safety of everyone at Cookery School being of paramount importance, those messages have been like music to our ears!
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Classes Uncategorized
Interactive Cookery Classes through Zoom
If you have ever wanted to experience the values of our Cookery School in your own home, you can now use the lockdown period for this. Our founder, Rosalind Rathouse, is putting over 50 years of teaching to perfect use and helping to demystify cooking with interactive cooking classes that remove jargon and celebrate good home cooking skills.
It’s the ideal way to use your time at home to master specific techniques such as learning how to make perfect puff pastry from scratch,
COVID-19 update from Cookery School
Like everyone else, we have been sorely tested over this Coronavirus epidemic and, despite the fact that many of our students are still happy to attend classes, having read the government advice, we have decided that it is probably in everyone’s best interest to close Cookery School until it is safe to reopen again.
We intend to put on a raft of new dates for classes and courses that have already been booked starting from Wednesday 18 March.
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Classes
A Mother’s Day Gift you can both benefit from
Miss those childhood days of cooking with your Mum? Want to spend some quality time with your mum, where you can have fun and learn together? Our Mother’s Day Offer could be the good news you’re looking for. This Mothering Sunday, treat both your mum and yourself to one of our cookery classes. Book one of our many practical classes for yourself and bring your Mum along at 50% off.
We offer a range of day and evening cooking classes for all ages and abilities,
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Classes
Christmas Baking with Dan Lepard
With a dramatic increase in independent bakeries in the last five years across the UK and as our love affair with Great British Bake Off continues, the rise in professional and home artisan baking seems to be here to stay.
For over a decade we’ve been baking with award-winning baker and food writer Dan Lepard, who has inspired and taught thousands of students coming through the Cookery School doors.
Due to the mad rush to get onto our Christmas baking class we added an additional date – the 15th December,
Choose ethical chocolate this Christmas!
At Christmas time, when we’re all thinking about chocolate, we wanted to mention that we’re full of beans about ethical chocolate!
Chocolate, which most of us take for granted, often has a slightly bitter aftertaste, not because it’s 85% cocoa but because the industry is a complex global supply chain which often results in cocoa farmers, particularly children, losing out. Chocolate is a luxury and we should be able to pay fairly for such a delicious treat.
Chef Spotlight: Chantal Coady OBE
We’re so excited to be welcoming the mother of English chocolate to the Cookery School kitchens this Christmas for an exclusive chocolate class! Chantal Coady established Rococo Chocolates nearly 40 years ago and since then, had led The Real Chocolate Revolution from the front. She’s done so much for the industry that she was awarded an OBE for services to chocolate!
We sat down with Chantal Coady to find out what excites her most about chocolate and received a sneak peek of the tips she’ll be revealing at our Christmas Chocolate Masterclass on December 3.
Four tips for kids in the kitchen
Here at Cookery School, we love seeing kids in the kitchen! Cooking is such a great way to learn and encourage creativity – especially if there’s a delicious dish at the end.
If you have a curious and culinary-minded child, here are our top tips to get them cooking in the kitchen.
Use recipes that you know work
Do not be tempted to go online to find recipes as often,
Class Diary: Cook’s Certificate
Jamie McGurk recently participated in our professional Cook’s Certificate course. Here, he explains his experience over the six-week course.
It’s fair to say elaborate and expansive cooking at university is a rare and laborious feat. During my studies, my dinners were usually simple chicken and rice, followed by a couple of Deliveroo meals and some oven chips in between. Whether it’s down to the laziness of a second-year student,
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Classes Cook's Certificate
Introducing…our new cooking classes!
In between our classes, courses, Cook’s Certificate and corporate events, we’ve been working on something very special in the Cookery School kitchens – a whole batch of new cooking classes!
Check out what’s on offer in 2020 and do let us know if there’s any new cooking classes that you’d love to see on our menu.
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Classes
Class Diary: Cake Decorating
Our burgeoning baker, 13-year-old Marly Tashmina, is continuing her culinary foray with cake decorating. She explains what she learnt in the three-hour class.
I recently attended a cake decorating class at Cookery School. I bake quite a lot in my spare time and I was really excited to attend a detailed class like this.
The chef was incredibly engaging and brought a welcoming and fun atmosphere to the room.
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Classes
Class Diary: French Breakfast Pastries
13-year-old Marly Tashmina recently participated in our French breakfast pastries class, where she made croissants and a variety of other treats. She reveals what she learnt.
This was my fourth class here. I was very excited as I had never made any croissants or French pastries ever before.
When I arrived, there was a really nice atmosphere. We had some drinks and delicious food. The chef was incredibly inviting and started by introducing the ingredients that we would be using.
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Classes
Chef Spotlight: Freddy Gangemi
Our fantastic team of chefs are the experts in all things cookery, leading the majority of our diverse classes. However, every now and then, we welcome a guest chef to share their specialist knowledge far and wide. Just one of these is Freddy Gangemi, an Italian native that leads our Roman and Sicilian classes. We sat down with Freddy to find out what he loves about cooking and the special draw to Italian flavours.
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Can you tell me a little about your culinary journey?
5 tips for a healthy gut
Nutritional Therapist and author of The Gut Makeover and The Gut Makeover Recipe Book, Jeannette Hyde, offers up some pointers on how to start eating for a healthy gut.
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Classes Ingredients
Mind the Gut: Q&A with Jeannette Hyde
Research has proven that having a healthy gut microbiome is critical to your overall health. Gut health doesn’t just keep weight and digestive symptoms down, mood and energy up; it is also linked to healthy skin and an improved immune system. Cookery School spoke to Jeannette Hyde, Nutritional Therapist and author of The Gut Makeover and The Gut Makeover Recipe Book, about how to eat for optimal gut – and mental – health.
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Classes Ingredients
To Ve(gan) Or Not To Ve(gan)
Veganism is one of Britain’s fastest growing lifestyle movements according to The Telegraph. November is officially ‘World Vegan Month’ so here’s a quick introduction to why people choose to be animal-free, according to The Vegan Society.
Animals – Vegans don’t eat any meat products and defend the lives of animals. This extends further than just food and includes cosmetics, clothing and even medicines.
Health – A lot of vegans believe that the health benefits of an animal-free diet include increased energy and younger looking skin!
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Classes Ingredients
Our top 5 classes this August
August is here (we know – already!). We’ve compiled the list below of our favourite classes this month.
Just so you know, all of our classes include a welcome snack/breakfast upon arrival and at the end of the class, you will sit down around the Cookery School table to enjoy what you have made together.
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Classes Ingredients
6 things every fresher should know
Hands up, who worries that their children will head out into the big wide world and live on baked beans and takeaway pizza?
We can’t teach your kids to grow money or write a top quality essay but we can give our top tips to help them in the kitchen when living in self-catered accommodation or a shared house.
Buddy up: Cooking for one is much less cost-effective than cooking for four.
Great British Chefs at Cookery School
On Friday we were pleased to welcome Great British Chefs’ Cook School to our kitchens. GBC Cook School is an opportunity for a select group of bloggers and keen cooks to have a hands-on lesson from the top chefs that feature on their website.
Friday’s chef was Adam Gray from Skylon. Here’s Adam in action rolling out bread for his mackerel dish:
We started with fresh mackerel wrapped in bread that was rolled out flat then pan fried so it’s crispy and just cooked then served with rhubarb.
What goes into planning a class at Cookery School?
A good example of this exercise is our Ultimate Baking class which we called ‘The Ultimate’ because we consider it to be just that with so many different techniques and flavours to enjoy.
Putting a class together is tricky as it involves much thought and choice making but is even trickier when overwhelmed by the wonderful treats within the British bakery repertoire. We approached it by asking ourselves what foods we would like to eat on a typically British High tea and what worthwhile techniques we would be acquiring.
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Classes
House of Coco at The Ultimate Fish & Shellfish class
Have a look via the link below at what journalist Sanah Shaikh from House of Coco thought about our new Ultimate Fish & Shellfish class she attended a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.houseofcoco.net/the-ultimate-fish-shellfish-cookery-class/
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Classes
Caprice Holdings at Cookery School
We had great fun last Friday with Tim and Phil from Caprice Holdings. The Ivy’s Christmas soufflé they made was sensational. We all absolutely loved it!
We are very excited about doing the series of early 2015 classes with them at Cookery School.
Classes
· The Taste of The Ivy: learn to recreate classic dishes from The Ivy (30 January 2015, 10am to 1.30pm);
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Classes
Is the baking craze here to stay?
Every time I open the paper I read something about the Great British Bake Off, now in the fifth series, with six million viewers it seems the craze is here to stay. It is an exciting time for pastry, cakes, pies and artisan breads, which in particular, have seen a rise (!) in popularity, with more and more people taking classes and courses, opening independent shops and pop ups and even pushing the big supermarkets to stock more speciality breads.
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Classes
Advanced Pastry: Val McArthur Delivers the Dish
Chef and food styling assistang Val McArthur recently attended our Advanced Pastry class and sent us this write-up of her experience which we’re sharing with her permission. Thanks, Val! And per Val’s suggestions, we’ve changed the format of the class, now called Understanding Puff Pastry, to include more hands-on experience. The next session is 13th July 2013.
Pushing my way through the throng of Saturday shoppers,
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Classes
A short course in baking
by Rosalind Rathouse
I was born into a family of cooks and from a very early age was allowed into the kitchen. In Johannesburg, where I grew up, there was an annual agricultural show and each year my mother, my aunt and us kids, entered cupcakes, scones and cakes into the show and waited with baited breath to see whether we had won a prize. As I became a more accomplished as a cook,
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Classes
Cooking Classes During the Olympics
Above image is courtesy of with Relish who’ve designed some fantastic (unofficial) posters for London 2012 using everyday objects to form the Olympic rings. Naturally we’re big fans of the poster involving food!
With the Olympics less than a month a way, we’ve decided to put on a series of courses taking place during the Olympics for those of you looking for alternative ways to enjoy London 2012.
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Classes
10 sushi tips from Kimiko Barber
Kimiko Barber was recently here at Cookery School, teaching a chef training course in sushi making. Kimiko is fantastic – amazingly talented and a terrific teacher. We learned a bunch from her and she kindly gave us permission to share some of top sushi-making tips.
The secrets of sushi
- 1. Good sushi begins with good rice. There are two types of rice – indica and japonica – no prizes for guessing which one must be used!
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Classes
Pies for British Pie Week… And Every Week
We’re in the throws of British Pie Week – not that we need an excuse to celebrate pies, but it was as good a reason as any to gather our students in the kitchen for our All Manners of Pies cookery class.
Ghalid led us through pies of all sorts ranging from chicken and mushroom, beef and ale, and apple pie through to pasties. Our own salami-making-maven Charlotte was there to pass on a few notes.
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Classes
Why We Are Different
It’s been nearly a decade since I first opened Cookery School at Little Portland Street in London and my what an exciting, busy and delicious decade it’s been. As we enter into 2012, I’ve been reflecting on the qualities of Cookery School that have kept it going so well over the years. These are the things that keep new students coming in, and old students coming back. I hope to keep these strengths alive for many years to come.
