Most of us would like to improve our culinary skills, why not book a class with The Cookery School the next time you are in London? There are day and night classes with a wide variety of topics, from knife skills or chocolate making, to Mexican, Indian or Thai cuisine.
For those based in London, there are courses that last six weeks (one night each week) or even three full-day courses to really focus. And there is a class or course for everyone, from beginners to intermediate and advanced levels.
About cooking school
The cooking school was founded more than ten years ago by Rosalind Rathouse, who was a professional cook before establishing the school to teach adults and children. All recipes are designed to be recreated at home and some have been family recipes of Rosalind’s mother and even her grandmother.
Teachers here want students to gain confidence in their cooking skills, so there are a lot of demystifications of cooking techniques and jargon, and questions are encouraged. From an easy-to-follow demo to the start, most of the learning is very hands-on as you create meals with the chef circulating to help everyone in the classroom.
While the teaching style is informal at The Cookery School, all teachers have both the expert cooking skills you would be proficient with and the teaching skills to know how to impart knowledge. Students work in pairs or small groups so that no one is left without support. At the end of the class, everyone comes together to taste the dishes and perhaps enjoy a glass of wine.
Sustainability
In addition to offering courses on sustainable cooking, The Cookery School uses only organic meat, poultry, eggs, tubers, fruits and wines, and over 75% of the ingredients are sourced locally.
The school also recycles all food waste, uses renewable energy in the kitchens, and has a ‘no plastics’ policy by choosing 99% of its supplies in glass jars or cans. There is also no cling film (Saran Wrap) in the kitchens.
Perfect Cupcakes
I had only heard good things about The Cookery School, but the best way to really know about a place is to visit me, so I tried a Perfect Cupcakes class with my young daughter.
We were greeted by a member of staff and offered drinks before the lesson started. This was a great time to meet others in the course and discover our interests and hopes for the session.
The basement kitchen classroom has plenty of cabinets and coat racks away from the workstations and there was an apron ready for everyone with our name on it.
The chef’s demo workstation has a camera upstairs and there’s a screen on the classroom side of the counter, so even if you can’t get close to the demo, you can still see exactly what’s going on. Sometimes even being right next to the counter meant we couldn’t see into the bowl, but the camera is at that angle, so it’s worth it.
All ingredients were weighed and prepared for us ahead of time, which is a great time saver. We also talked about the type of ingredients (I didn’t know that regular flour was better than yeast flour for cake baking, obviously with added baking powder) and the importance of room temperature butter to the creaming process.
I found out how much less waste there is with a rubber spatula instead of a wooden spoon, but my daughter also noticed that that meant the opportunity to ‘lick the bowl’ was also reduced. I also found that a scoop of ice cream is a great measure for adding cake mix to cake boxes. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before.
Clearly, I am not going to reveal all the secrets of the course, but I have tried making cakes ever since and yes my cakes have really improved. And my daughter and I will continue to practice and have fun cooking together.
When our class finished with some pretty cakes to take home, we were given boxes to pack and we got to sample the chef’s cakes from the range of recipes they also gave us to take home. Probably the only negative point would be that some of the recipes are in imperial measurements and some are in metric and some are in US cups, so some standardization would be appreciated. But they are all easy to follow and we are working to overcome them.
We all have a take-home goody bag too with magazines, some baking ingredients, as well as recipes and cooking tip cards. We really enjoyed our morning at The Cookery School as did the rest of the class, many of whom rushed over to John Lewis, as he is nearby, to buy scoops of ice cream for future cake baking sessions.
Dirección: Cookery School, 15b Little Portland Street, Londres W1W 8BW
Nearest Tube Station: Oxford Circus
Use Journey Planner to plan your route on public transportation.
Phone: 020 7631 4590
Official Website: www.cookeryschool.co.uk
Disclosure: The company provided free access to this service for review purposes. For more information, see our Ethics Policy.
