cookery school

A TASTE OF
THE LAKES

The Lake District is renowned for its rain. You make the three-and-a-half hour journey to admire the serene waters of Coniston and Ullswater. Then you return looking as if you've swam in them.

The rain was drumming relentlessly on my windscreen as I crawled along the winding roads to Staveley, near Kendal.

Luckily, my friend and I weren't going hill-walking. We were spending the day at LucyCooks Cookery School.

The eponymous Lucy Nicholson is something of a Lake District legend.

Since founding a grocer's shop in Ambleside in 1989, her success has blossomed into a Rick Stein/Betty's-of-Harrogate style "empire" which includes a restaurant, catering business, bistro and wine bar, and cookery school.

Prior to our arrival, Lucy's-the-restaurant had received a less-than-enthusiastic review in the Sunday Telegraph. After nibbling on what the reviewer took to be frozen prawns, she griped: "And she has the brass neck to teach people how to cook!"

So we were a little apprehensive but we needn't have been.

The review seemed so at odds with our experience at the school, it made us wonder if they'd got the wrong restaurant.

Every ingredient we used was fresh-from-the-farmyard quality.

We also learned to use little-known ingredients such as Good King Henry, a more robust alternative to spinach.

The course was an all-dayer called Vegetarian Veterans.

I am veggie; my friend isn't but wanted to know how to venture beyond the spinach lasagne fall-back option whenever a cattle-dodger came to call.

As she saw the gleaming granite benches and stainless steel hobs, my friend began to suffer flashbacks to ferocious domestic science teachers and those Tupperware boxes of congealed macaroni cheese we used to take home for our parents to bin.

For the uninitiated, cookery schools are nothing like that.

Of the 18 people on our course, half were experienced, knowledgeable homecooks, and half were cheerfully less competent.

Dale, our teacher/chef was there purely to hand out tips, not tickings-off.

I learned this as I tried to hide a pan of over-stewed rhubarb from him (having spent ages wandering around the unfamiliar kitchen in search of a custard pan).

"Just drain it off," he advised with a smile, peering into my cauldron of pink gloop.

The menu was: a seasonal vegetable tagine, a tomato and herb tarte tatin, Thai coleslaw with a sweet chilli dressing, rhubarb and candied ginger crumble with a vanilla custard and, the centrepiece, a mushroom, spinach and goat's cheese roulade. Each dish was demonstrated by Dale before we were sent to make them ourselves in the fantastically equipped kitchens.

The atmosphere was upbeat and stress-free - my friend is already talking about doing the Fabulous Fish course.

"Somebody rang us up and asked if we could coach him to get a Michelin star," said Sue, on the welcome desk. "But we're not that kind of school. We teach home-cooking in a relaxed environment. That's what we're about."

We left the school with an array of dishes, each of which got a thumbs-up from my friends back in Nottingham - more appetising than my domestic science macaroni cheese special, apparently.

Lucy Cooks offers a wide range of courses. Call or log on to lucycooks.co.uk.

Jennifer Scott

Articles published in Nottingham Evening Post, 5th February 2009