How To
Up your cooking game with helpful how-to tips and tricks from our expert team. Our how-to section aims to ensure your culinary adventures are always a success.
Rosalind’s Cake Baking Round Up
Cookery School founder, Rosalind Rathouse talks about her annual Christmas cake as well as her favourite cake recipes that she grew up with, the importance of great ingredients and what to look for when dining out on cake.
The Christmas cake
Historically, the Christmas cake is associated with eating a large fruit cake to celebrate the Twelfth Night or Epiphany on the 5th of January, which at that time was a bigger feast-day than Christmas.
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How To Ingredients Ros Rants
Five top tips for meal prep
Batch cooking, or meal prep, is the act of preparing a week’s worth of food in one session, ensuring that your lunches and dinners are looked after for the days ahead. It’s a fantastic way to ensure you’re eating well, saving money and most importantly, improving your cooking skills!
However, meal prep doesn’t mean having the same thing for five days straight. With a little forward planning and organisation,
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How To Ingredients
RECIPE: Poached pears in vanilla syrup
What is poaching?
Uses a small amount of water that has been flavoured with savoury ingredients or sugar and spices, in which the ingredient being poached is submerged in the poaching liquid and cooked very slowly. Food cooked this way stays beautifully moist.
Poached pears in vanilla syrup
Feeds 4
Ingredients
4 pears, flavourful but not too ripe
150ml / ¼ pint water
1 vanilla pod
Method
1.
RECIPE: Carrot Cake
Cake making needs to be very precise and recipes have to be followed exactly and techniques and quantities followed to the letter. We recommend weighing out all ingredients before starting to mix and remember not to over-mix your cake mixture as this can make them heavy, as it removes essential air from the mix.
If you like your carrot cake iced this recipe calls for a delicious cream cheese icing.
RECIPE: Roast Lamb
In this article we look at the principles of roasting – a brilliantly simple cooking method that can be applied to everything from fruit and vegetables, to meat and fish. Our roast lamb recipe below is a perfect roast to make for Easter and during the spring with new season lamb.
Roasts: basic principles
– Coat the meat or vegetables to be roasted with flavouring, e.g.
RECIPE: Roast vegetables
By learning how to roast one type of meat or vegetable, you can roast anything, as the principle is the same (with variations in details). The method of roasting uses dry heat from an oven, giving a delicious flavour to the food, by browning the ingredient that is cooking.
Any leftover roasted vegetables can be served cold or at room temperature as a great salad.
Roasting vegetables: basic principles
• Coat the vegetables to be roasted with flavouring,
RECIPE: Blini
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make and prepare a basic pancake mix, you can make a whole range of different pancakes using the same principle.
With Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) falling on 16th February, not everyone is looking for a sweet treat.
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!
Create A Multitude of Delicious Dishes with The Humble Tinned Tomato
The humble tin of tomatoes can produce undreamt of feasts easily and quickly. Our founder Rosalind, shows how this basic ingredient can be transformed into a multitude of delicious dishes in no time at all.
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make this simple tomato sauce,
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,
RECIPE: Lentil Soup
This winter warmer is flavoured with cumin and coriander alongside red lentils and vegetables, perfect for a cold day.
Soups: basic principles
• Almost any vegetable can be used in a soup
• Fry onion in oil or butter over a medium high heat. Do not heat the oil first, heat together. Only stir when the onions start to colour (the sugar in the onion starts to caramelise and cause the browning.
RECIPE: Poached eggs
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
RECIPE: Kombucha
With thanks to Alice MacKinnon
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how the fermentation process works, you can make a whole range of different ferments using the same principle.
During our time at home,
RECIPE: Soft and hard boiled egg
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – for example, if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
Looking after your Gut Health – Interview with Jeannette Hyde
Jeannette Hyde is a London-based practising Registered Nutritional Therapist (BSc mBANT, CNHC) who specialises in helping people improve their gut health. She leads a very popular class with us at Cookery School on eating deliciously for a healthy gut, and the foods and meals that can help us get there.
We caught up with Jeannette to discover the importance of maintaining a healthy gut and how you can do this during lockdown.
RECIPE: Quick Breads – Cornbread
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one quick bread, you can make a whole range of different quick breads using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
RECIPE: Hot cross buns
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
RECIPE: Banana Ice Cream
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one ice cream, you can make a whole range of different ice creams using the same principle.
Try our delicious banana ice cream recipe, it is so simply there’s only one ingredient!
RECIPE: Chicken tikka
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
RECIPE: Rice Basics – boiled, Persian and risotto
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
RECIPE: Asparagus Soup
Thanks to Robinne Collie, Co-founder of Cook For Good CIC for her finished soup pictures!
Soups: basic principles
• Almost any vegetable can be used in a soup
• Fry onion in oil or butter over a medium high heat. Do not heat the oil first, heat together. Only stir when the onions start to colour (the sugar in the onion starts to caramelise and cause the browning.
RECIPE: Tomato Sauce (really a stew)
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
Category
How To Recipes Sustainability
Healthy Eco-Friendly Eating – Our Top Titbits!
We’re sharing some top tips for a healthy eco-friendly approach to eating delicious food all year round!
Batch cooking, or meal prep, is a great way to ensure you’re eating well, saving money and most importantly, improving your cooking skills! And it doesn’t mean you have to eat the same food five days straight. You can enjoy a wide variety of dishes without too much effort.
Combined with eating more local,
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How To Sustainability
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,
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,
RECIPE: Blueberry Crumble Muffins
Bank holiday is all about spending time with people that you care about, and there’s no better bonding time then getting in the kitchen and whipping up a feast. To get your creative juices going, we are giving you one of our most loved Cookery School recipes! These deliciously fruity blueberry crumble muffins are perfect for snacking, breakfast or as a sweet treat after your meal.
RECIPE: Gazpacho
Here’s our version of this classic, refreshing chilled Spanish soup, gazpacho, to keep you and your loved ones nice and cool during this glorious heatwave. Summer is in full swing and with temperatures rising to a whopping 37°C it’s way too hot to cook!
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How To Ingredients Recipes
RECIPE: Vanilla ice cream
In honour of National Vanilla Ice Cream Day (and the sweltering UK weather), we’re sharing our tried-and-true recipe for classic vanilla ice cream. You can make this using an ice cream maker or without, meaning there’s no excuse not to try it!
Plastic-Free July: Easy swaps in your kitchen
Plastic Free July is a fantastic initiative that aims to reduce plastic pollution, but can seem overwhelming on first glance! After all, plastic hides in many products, making swapping them out harder than first thought.
Luckily, there are many easy swaps to make in the kitchen. We have been running a single-use-plastic-free kitchen for over 12 years, so have found many solutions along our journey.
Lose the packaging
The UK suffers from excessive plastic packaging so reducing your consumption is an important first step.
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How To Sustainability
Ros Rants: On the subject of sugar
I am no stranger to a sweet treat – in fact, I love them! From pieces of Original Beans Pura Malingas Peruvian 75% chocolate to snack on, to gorgeous fruit crumbles, there isn’t much I don’t like.
The one thing that all diets have in common is that sugar is the baddie. However, when humans first started cooking, sugar was viewed as a treat, mainly because it was so hard to come by.
