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Breakfast at Heath Street Bakehouse
Last week Ros and the Cookery School team made a breakfast trip to Heath Street Bakehouse for the monthly staff breakfast. In the heart of Hampstead, the bakehouse specialises in sourdough, cakes and pastries. The team was treated to buttery croissants, fantastic bread, freshly roasted coffee and a tour of the kitchen where founders Joe, the miller, and Salah, the baker, were hard at work.
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Courses Newsletters Uncategorized
Afternoon Tea Week
It’s National Afternoon Tea Week which means everyone is officially allowed to eat tiny sandwiches, cakes, tarts, scones and sweet treats instead of lunch or dinner. Hooray!
Which part of afternoon tea is your favourite? Is it the perfectly formed cucumber sandwiches or miniature egg mayonnaise finger rolls? Or perhaps you rush straight for the glossy tartlets or cream cake, or maybe you are a classic crumbly scone fan.
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Newsletters Uncategorized
Have we reached an all time sugar high?
Our founder Rosalind and Bee Wilson, food writer, author and campaigner for food education (pictured above) can certainly put the food world to rights when they sit down. This time the conversation was about sugar in fruit as Bee was writing a piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Bee spoke about the changes in the sweetness of fruit over the last 20+ years.
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Newsletters Uncategorized
RECIPE : Spanakopita
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 use filo pastry, you can make a whole range of different dishes using the same principle.
Spanakopita
Use a 9″/23cm X 13″/33cm baking pan
Ingredients
3lbs/1.5kg fresh spinach cooked and very well drained
4 bunches spring onions
½lb/250g filo pastry leaves
8ozs/250g melted butter
½ cup finely chopped parsley
1 teaspoon finely chopped dill
¼ cup finely chopped mint
½ lb crumbled feta cheese
4ozs/125ml olive oil
freshly ground salt and pepper
METHOD
1.
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RECIPE: Vegan Gingerbread Men
Gingerbread Men – Vegan
Ingredients
150g coconut oil
1 cup brown sugar
1½ cups molasses
7 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons allspice ground
4 teaspoons ginger ground
4 teaspoons cinnamon ground
2 teaspoon cloves ground
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
3 tablespoons of cold water
½ cup of cold water
additional flour if necessary for mixing in/rolling
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National Vegetarian Week: Helping the planet through your plate
15th– 21st May is National Vegetarian Week, a movement that aims to promote eating more plant-based foods. With experts saying that by 2050, the developed world will need to reduce their meat consumption by 50%, it’s becoming more important than ever for individuals and families to celebrate the humble vegetable. Here at Cookery School, we’re leading from the front, with plenty of vegetarian and vegan classes,
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Update on our Covid-secure measures 2023
The World Health Organisation have officially declared that the covid pandemic is over but that the number of deaths and hospitalisations due to covid has stabilised.
At Cookery School at Little Portland Street we are now changing the initiatives we have had in place, since our return to our kitchens after the lockdowns, in accordance with this new advice. We feel a responsibility to look after those visiting Cookery School as we do have people that are vulnerable taking classes and courses so will remain cautious in our response.
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Become a Professional Cook in 2023
Turn your passion into a new career in food
Make 2023 your year and become a professional cook! With the start of 2023 heralding new beginnings, now could be the time to turn your love of food into a new career. The role of a cook or chef comes in all shapes and sizes but ultimately it’s a creative passion, whether you’re a baker, a patisserie chef,
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Baking and Breaking Bread with Dan Lepard
We always love to welcome one of the most respected authorities on baking, Dan Lepard, into Cookery School. His sourdough baking classes with us remain extremely popular thanks not only to Dan’s extensive knowledge, but also to the style of his teaching.
We caught up with Dan to find out some of the secrets to his success, what he feels are some of the trends within bread making and why he enjoys teaching here at Cookery School…
Q:What are some of the most surprising things you have learnt from teaching people how to bake bread?
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Uncategorized We Love
RECIPE: Basic Sponge Cake
This versatile basic sponge cake which is also fatless, is a great recipe to have in your repertoire and is very popular at Cookery School as it can be decorated and filled in so many ways.
Sponge cakes: basic principles
• Sponge cakes need air to make them light and fluffy.
• Most sponge cakes are made by creaming butter and sugar at the start and adding eggs,
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RECIPE: Roast Pork
Roast pork, is not always easy to perfect every time. Our simple and easy to follow recipe will allow you to have the perfect crispy pork skin whilst keeping the meat juicy and succulent. To serve with your roast pork, a quick and easy homemade apple sauce makes for the perfect accompany.
Ingredients
2kgs/5lbs pork belly on the bone
4 cloves garlic
6 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps rock salt
freshly ground pepper
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Update on our Covid-secure measures
VENTILATION, VENTILATION AND VENTILATION IS OUR MANTRA AS WELL AS MASK WEARING
We believe that to keep everyone safe, we have to keep all our covid-secure measures in place for the foreseeable future as we learn to live with covid.
We are very aware that whilst hospital admissions are not rising, we are in the middle of a serious fourth wave as can be seen by the huge rise in covid cases caused by the new Omicron variant.
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RECIPE: Cranberry Ice Cream
Leftover cream and cranberry sauce? Our delicious zero waste cranberry sauce ice cream is the perfect hassle-free Boxing Day dessert!
Cranberry Ice Cream
Ingredients
-cranberry sauce
-double or single cream
Method
-In a freezer friendly container, pour the cream and then slowly add the cranberry sauce to taste and mix well.
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Recipe: Brussel Sprouts and Chestnuts
Brussel sprouts and chestnuts is a must for the Ultimate Christmas dinner, discover our delicious recipe this Christmas. We guarantee this recipe will have all the family reaching for more.
Brussel Sprouts and Chestnuts
Ingredients
1 lb brussel sprouts
1 lb chestnuts fresh, vac packed or tinned
knob of butter
salt and pepper to taste
Method
-Shell the chestnuts and clean the brussel sprouts.
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RECIPE: Vegan Meringues
Celebrate World Vegan Month with a delicious sweet treat!
Vegan Meringues
INGREDIENTS
125ml aquafaba (liquid from a drained tin of chickpeas)
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
125ml caster sugar (we like to use unbleached caster sugar)
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
METHOD
1.Preheat the oven to 120ºC/250ºF.
2.Line a baking tray with non stick paper.
3.Place the aquafaba into a very large and clean mixing bowl.
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RECIPE: How to Poach an Egg
What is poaching?
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. The versatile cooking method allows you can poach an array of foods such as eggs, meat, fish and fruit.
Poached eggs
Feeds 1
Ingredients
Allow 2 eggs per person
Method
1.
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Recipes for National Cooking Programme – Week Sixteen
We’re very excited to launch our National Cooking Programme – an ‘oven-ready’ programme of x20 FREE online interactive classes for teenagers wanting to learn to cook. Here is what we’ll be cooking on Wednesday 29 September 2021 at 5.30pm which will be livestreamed on Instagram and YouTube.
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Recipes for National Cooking Programme – Week Eight
We’re very excited to launch our National Cooking Programme – an ‘oven-ready’ programme of x20 FREE online interactive classes for teenagers wanting to learn to cook. Here is what we’ll be cooking on Wednesday 4 August 2021 at 5.30pm which will be livestreamed on Instagram and YouTube.
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Recipes for National Cooking Programme – Week Seven
We’re very excited to launch our National Cooking Programme – an ‘oven-ready’ programme of x20 FREE online interactive classes for teenagers wanting to learn to cook. Here is what we’ll be cooking on Wednesday 28 July 2021 at 5.30pm which will be livestreamed on Instagram and YouTube.
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Launch of our National Cooking Programme
The pandemic has taught us is that as a nation we are more resilient than we realised and, through our creativity and tenacity, have been able to find solutions to problems that we never dreamt we would be facing.
At Cookery School at Little Portland Street, we realised that with yet another extended lockdown, now is the time for us to bring our National Cooking Programme, on which we have been working for some years,
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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
Urgent plea to help our children’s future
The growing scandal of the failure to provide children in the UK the opportunity to have regular schooling during lockdown, has appalled us. Their futures ought to be our major concern now. Many of them will not have set foot in an educational institution for just short of half a year and we owe them more than that!
As the founder of London’s most sustainable cookery school, a full time working teacher for over 55 years and 77 year old grandmother,
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RECIPE: Bakewell Tart
Searching for the perfect Bakewell Tart recipe? Originating from the Bakewell pudding, the Bakewell tart is an English dessert made with shortcrust pastry, jam, frangipane (a sweet filling made with almonds), and a topping of flaked almonds. The pudding was, like many fantastic recipes, a happy accident, made by a cook in the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire in the 1860s.
BAKEWELL TART
Pastry
10 ozs/250g flour
7 ozs/175g butter
2 ozs/50g caster sugar
½ level teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
2 egg yolks
Filling
6 ozs/150g of good strawberry jam
4 ozs/100g butter
4 ozs/100g sugar
4 ozs/100g ground almonds if desired
4 eggs
handful flaked almonds to sprinkle over top
METHOD
1.
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Recipes Uncategorized We Love
