cookery school

Slaving over a hot stove has never been so fashionable. The celebrity chef gang - icons like Jamie, Nigella and Gordon - haven’t just inspired us to want to cook, but also to improve our skills so we can be stars in our own kitchens, too.
Now we can visit kitchens runs by TV chefs like Nick Nairn and Rick Stein to learn tricks and techniques. We can invite friends and neighbours round to watch us create posh nosh with pretty mounds of rice to go with the main course and spun sugar cages for the pudding.

Even the celebs are in on the act with Kylle admitting she is following the trend by signing up for cookery lessons.
In the last 10 years the number of cookery courses has increased by a massive 70 per cent, with more than 5,000 now available nationwide according to education advisors, Hot Courses (www.hotcourses.com).
Restaurants as diverse as Teza Indian Canteen and Bar in Botchergate,Carllsle, and the Michelin-starred L’Enclume, in Cartmel, even offer foodies the chance to wear a chef’s whites and cook in their kitchens.
If you can’t find a course to suit, why not teach yourself; Amazon has reported a 56 per cent rise in cookery book sales last year.

Peter Sidwell, chef and owner of Good Taste cafe, in Keswick, is launching his kitchen studio in the summer. He said: “Cooking is the new rock’n’roll, they say, and people love doing it, it is trendy and people want to know how to cook well.”
Peter worked at the Lucy Cooks kitchen school in Staveley, part of Lucy Nicholson’s food business in Ambleside.
The popularity of the cooking school and the regular demands by customers at his cafe prompted Peter to open his own school
“I’m going to be teaching eight to 10 people a day because I want to spend one-on-one time with them, I don’t want it to be like a classroom, I just want to have a bit of fun for a day.
“More and more people are interested in the people who cook their food and how they cook it.
“Gone are the days when chefs stayed behind closed doors.”

TV cook and champion of Cumbrian food Annette Gibbons has run a cookery school in the kitchen of her Mawbray home since 1995.
She says interest in cooking has never been hotter: “Every year I do a series of evening classes and I have had to put on more evenings and more hours.
“People come because it is social and inspirational, some people just want some new ideas.”
Annette takes groups ranging from two to 10 people and although she does the cooking, they involve the whole group.
“People can touch, smell and see it at close quarters from the beginning all the way through.
“I very rarely have ‘one I made earlier’.
“People watch what I cook and then eat what I make.”

The boss of the best-known cookery school in Cumbria dismissed the idea that there were “thousands” of teaching courses to choose from. -
Lucy Nicholson said: “There are some wonderful ones and some quite questionable: There are probably only about 30 schools where people can learn and cook themselves. -
“For some schools, read: a kitchen with a few people ranged round it. People can come away from those thinking ‘I have not learned anything, I have no skills or tips or anything to take home with me’.”
Running a successful school takes a lot of planning and a lot of hard work to establish, according to Lucy. 

Her school is at Staveley and runs a variety of courses for up to 24 people.
“I had the idea of doing ‘Lucy Cooks’ six or seven years ago, but I only opened in August 2006 because it takes time to organise,” she explained.
“It is not like a restaurant when you walk past it and think ‘that looks nice’ and go in.
“In the early days, we used to get people in just to make up the numbers but in February we had 394 people through the doors which is fantastic.
“People want to have a go and the only way to experience how fantastic it is to cook is to feel and cook the food, it is the only thing you can’t do virtually.”
People of all ages are taught at Lucy’s and she says the family days are her favourites.
“We get people who have never cooked before or those who want to learn new skills or recipes, children, students and older people. Family fun days are my favourite because it is lovely watching people interact together.” 
For more information, go to:
www.lucycooks.co.uk
wwwcumbriaonaplate.co.uk