Highlights: A lot of fun if you go with friends or a date but don’t expect to master cooking, its only two hours long.
Did you ever pretend you were on a cookery show when you were little, presenting hints and tips to the camera? I did. Despite the lack of an audience (even my parents are thus far unaware) I used to make little comments, looking directly to an imaginary camera, whilst beating cake batter.
Can I cook? Well, I am not so sure. I know that I have a ‘fair’ palate, and I know which flavor combinations I prefer and I am overly vocal and tactless about it.
Once, a date cooked me Thai flavoured mince. I am not good at hiding disappointment and may have said something like ‘At what point in the cooking process did you realize that this wasn’t a good idea.’ The date went down hill from there…
I also know that I am scared to push myself in the kitchen – probably something that extends elsewhere in my life. I’m either too lazy or too tentative – anything that looks like too much work –for example deboning something is dismissed instantly. I flick through recipe books salivating, but dismissing anything that requires stuffing, rolling, too many ingredients etc. So I liked the idea of learning a repertoire of dishes from a chef, hopefully simple but pack a punch dishes to whizz out for guests rather than spending hours studying cookery books.
A bit of research indicated that there are plenty of places in London to hone cooking skills, with a variety of different pricing options and time investment. I went for a quick fix! A friend booked tickets for Jamie Oliver’s Recipease in Notting Hill and asked me if I wanted to the spare one. We deliberated over which lesson we should attend out of a selection including Japanese, Vietnamese, Italian etc. Mexican street food on a Monday night won (quite productive way to spend an evening early in the week).
We were greeted with some Prosecco (after we had placed our personal items in lockers, aproned up and wash our hands) whilst we awaited our chef tutor. Let’s not create illusions – these, naturally, are not run by Jamie Oliver. But our tutor was bubbly with plenty of humor spread through the class.
There was a demonstration, a quick lesson in knife skills (learning how to chop an onion from a chef is always very useful) and then back to our stations to cook a feast of:
Corn tortillas (freshly made and pressed by our own fair hands) with a choice of fillings including:
Chipotle chicken
Fried Corn
Tomato and feta
As well as freshly made tomato salsa and guacamole.
There was a race to finish as, by 9 o’clock, we were all famished… And the food, well, it was genuinely yummy… if a bit messy to eat…
Realistically the 2 hours we spent at Recipease did not a chef make. In fact some parts were almost cheating in terms of everything was prepared for us and we just had to flash the ingredients in the pan. However, it was a lot of fun (but go with a friend). The couple next to us were on a first date and it broke the ice nicely!
The class before ours had been making fresh pasta, which I would genuinely consider going to again given my BF has a pasta maker on his work surface which has not be used so I will drag him along.
There are plenty of other places in London that do something similar – I’m desperate to try L’atelier de chefs, which offers 30 minutes sessions as well as longer sessions that are all reasonably priced. I am not able to make a longer commitment this year (there are too many challenges left to do and all have to be budgeted for) but Waitrose have a cookery school in King’s Cross, and Leith’s offer more comprehensive short courses over weekends or evenings (which is definitely going on a future list).