cookery school

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS AT LUCYCOOKS...

You can see salmon leap from the river below if you go onto the balcony at LucyCooks in autumn. For the rest of the year this riverside cookery school in Staveley, near Kendal, offers piscine encounters of a different kind. Its fish courses are ideal for otherwise confident cooks who shy away from anything with gills: as tutor Nick Martin explains, fish is both the easiest thing to cook and the easiest to ruin.

With more than 20 years' cheffing experience, Nick dispenses trade secrets as readily as he hands out tasting forks. We learn that fish stock cubes are fine, frozen fish is not, and you should soak mussels in cold water sprinkled with porridge oats to purify and plump them before cooking. After demonstrating both dinner-party dazzlers (grilled sea bass with seafood consomme) and week-night standbys (braised salmon with a mustard and Gruyere crust), Nick helps pupils recreate them at the work stations.

Preparing for lunch, we take turns in tending the communal pot of bouillabaisse. Brimming with fennel, orange zest and seawater, it illustrates Nick's mantra that it's easy to build rich, deep flavours if you're patient and alert to timing. LucyCooks has day courses on subjects including Aga Sagas and Perfect Puds. From £135 per person. Mill Yard, Staveley, Near Kendal, Cumbria (, lucycooks.co.uk).

Article published in Food & Travel