cookery school

CUMBRIAN COOK-OFF

Daily Express

Recipe for success - head to the Lakes to polish up your culinary skills at a new cookery school. Good cooking is said to be all in the preparation. Lee Karen Stowe puts on her apron and heads for the Lake District.

All right I can certainly boil egg but when the girls chez moi it’s more likely to be bread dipped in olive oil, pasta with something green and leafy and, for pudding, chocolates and the rest of the wine. Not very impressive, agreed, so, offered the chance to try out a new cookery school in one of Britain’s honey pots, my spatula was ready.

LucyCooks, in Cumbrian village of Staveley, just up the road fro Windermere, opened in August to encourage people like me into the kitchen and to enjoy local foods from fell, farmhouse and field.

The school is well placed for a weekend getaway, being just a 20 minute drive from the shops and cafes of Ambleside where, in the late Eighties, the school’s founder Lucy Nicholson opened a small specialist grocery selling fresh pasta, and homemade pies.

Lucy’s grew into a successful deli; a café, Lucy’s on a plate, followed, the Lucy4, a wine bar and bistro. Now there is a cookery school on the site of an old cotton mill on the banks of the river Kent.

Elsewhere, at the mill, you’ll find a brewery with sampling room, a café and the speciality bread-maker Aidan Monks.

We begin with an eye-opening demonstration by Aidan who, after turning us of supermarket bread for ever and offering chunks of brioche, five grain rye and sourdough, helps us create buttons in dough with roast garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary. The brad, wolfed down while warm is sampled before my hilarious attempt at a french plait.

The day’s practical courses are pure escapism, with no distractions from children, the phone or the cat. I’m on a Thrilling Three Courses and I must admit that, although I’m 40, I’ve never cooked a three-course meal in my life, not even at Christmas.

“Even my wife is sick of my prawn curry,” moans Andrew, an export consultant from Kirby Lonsdale, also eager to expand his repertoire. Norma from Cumbria has been cooking all her life but wants to try something new, Rachel from Lancashire has promised her neighbour a scrumptious supper, and architect Roger and wife Linda have brought along their son Nicky fro an alternative family bonding day.

“Lots of people are perfectly capable of cooking but we live within a boundary of 20 dishes,” Lucy tells us over the breakfast of croissants and coffee, “so what we really need to push those boundaries.”

She guarantees we’ll go home feeling more confident. “It’s about taking people out of their comfort zone into an area in which they are perfectly capable without knowing it.”

With a work space in which to have a go, a fabulous workstation with hob, sink and rainbow-coloured spoons and bowls donated by Lakeland Kitchenware - I pick up a pink spatula and begin.

Our chef, Dale Blacow, who has 19 years’ experience, explains that good cooking is all in the preparation. Under his guidance we make a starter of salmon and spinach in pastry (en croute) on a bed of sautéed leeks with a dill cream sauce which, washed down with a bottle of wine, disappears at lunch time.

The main course is roasted rack of Lakeland lamb with a herb crust, served with sweet potato and garlic mash, roasted vegetables, red wine jus and a red onion marmalade.

I learn how to carve carrots and parsnips into batons and make the marmalade within minutes.

The day races by and we get a bit behind because of the banter (and the endless washing up), yet, refreshingly, I’ve thought about nothing else but timing, turning and mixing.

LucyCooks hasn’t transformed me overnight into a Nigella but it has been a great laugh and I feel inspired to have a go at home. Pop in for dinner and I'll show you a dish or three.

Karen Lee Stow