Week Five of our Cook’s Certificate in Food and Wine… And all is calm, as our now confident cooks prepare a three course meal for the cooking-to-a-budget assessment. Each has been given £10 to spend with careful instructions to calculate their costs, shop wisely and seasonally, and to keep everything straightforward and simple in terms of the cultural roots of their dishes. The results speak for themselves and really show how far everyone in the group has come on.

We smelt and then saw and then we tasted - salad, spinach and split pea stew with rice and rolls followed by crème caramel by Phoebe; soup and rolls, shepherd’s pie and rhubarb fool by Polly; spicy pulse salad, beetroot ravioli with sage butter and meringues with fruit by Rebecca; carrot soup and rolls, trout and dill risotto and orange bread & butter pudding by Susanne; soup, spinach & ricotta ravioli with a tomato sauce and more crème caramel by Basma.

It was delicious. As always there was a lot of learning, tips and creativity in the kitchen.

Fabulous blog post by Celia Warne on our recent Advanced Pastry class - the photos are stunning, and all taken with an iPhone!:  Cookery school – advanced pastry class | Dish Piglets

A full on day of Indian cooking with Kumud Shah for our Cook’s Certificate students today, who started with a breakfast (made by them) of masala puri with pickle and Indian tea. Moving onto the main event, they prepared and cooked under the instruction of the fantastic chef, Kumud Shah, who shares all her knowledge of spices and cooking healthy, delicious Indian food. She certainly know knows how to get the best out of her ingredients. Just look at our menu:

• onion bhajis and  spicy potato balls
• potato & stuffed aubergine curry
• mixed dal with spinach
• mushroom curry
• okra curry
• saffron rice
• naan bread
• coriander chutney
• tamarind sauce
• sweets - shrikland and mango lassi

We were thrilled to have recently been involved with London’s best local sausage competition, hosted by Jellied Eel Magazine. It was a top event that really does highlight just how many London butchers and producers are hard at work across the capital. Now, the results are in. Here’s the press release from Jellied Eel:

Over the past three months, The Jellied Eel magazine, together with London Farmers’ Markets, has once again been asking Londoners to vote for their favourite local sausage. Choosing from over 20 sausages using meat reared within 100 miles of London, the top ten voted for by the public went before an expert judging panel. They voted Flock and Herd’s Classic Pork sausage the best, and Highly Commended were Galileo Farm’s Pork Sausage and Happy Herefords’ Happy Hooligan Sausage.

Food writer Rebecca Seal, who helped to judge the competition, welcomed both the quality and the range on offer: “Ten years ago, sausages were all just anemic pink things. It’s great to see people doing traditional sausages and also experimenting.”

Cheryl Cohen of London Farmers’ Markets said: “There’s been a real sausage revival and they’re a popular item at our farmers’ markets,” adding “the purpose of the sausage competition is to highlight a product which sometimes we take for granted.”

Jellied Eel editor Ben Reynolds agreed it has been a great way to celebrate sausages: “The sausage is an emblem of the diversity you can get in just one type of product which is sold all over London. For this year’s competition we felt it was important to widen it out to include butchers using local meat as well as farmers’ market producers.”

In the judging, which took place at Little Portland Street’s Cookery School, the judges based their decision on taste, texture, appearance, the number of public votes and the story behind the sausage. In the winner’s case, they use Blythburgh free-range pork.

Charlie Shaw of Flock and Herd commented: “We always use natural casings, though they’re not cheap. We butcher the pork here, use cuts like belly and shoulder, mince it, add the ingredients, mince it again and fill the casings. There’s a bit of fat in the mix to keep it nice and moist.”

Responding to the news his sausage had triumphed Charlie added:

“I’m absolutely delighted to win, particularly as I entered a traditional London sausage, which is a plain sausage, and they say you can tell the quality of a butcher if their plain sausage is good.”

Lovely little write-up and glorious buttery pictures by Rosana McPhee from our recent Advanced Pastry Class (via Hot & Chilli: Cookery School)

We have a new class with Victoria Glass which is very exciting: Hand Painting, Sugar Flowers & Piping on 15 June.

Following on from a super full on day of cake decorating, Victoria will be running a shorter Saturday class on hand painting cakes, sugar flowers and piping work. Over the course of four and a half hours, Victoria will demo the techniques and each student will have three cakes to work with and take home at the end.

A few shots of Week 3 of our Cook’s Certificate in Food & Wine. A full-on but delicious week with highlights including: 

• Strawberry jam
• Lemon curd
• Chocolate soufflés
• Macaroons with butter cream
• Cakes - honey spice / chiffon / lemon cake / boiling milk sponge / chocolate & almond / banana loaf
• Short crust / pate sucrée / choux pastry
• Quiche
• Cornish pasties
• Strawberry tarts with patisserie cream and a fruit glaze

Get ready for chocolate. Our next Chocolate Making Workshop is coming up on 17th June and we’re getting excited about all things Amedei, Valhrona, and Original Beans, not to mention tempering, piping and more.

Chocolate Making Workshop (by cookeryschool)

Chef and food styling assistang Val McArthur recently attended our Advanced Pastry class and sent us this write-up of her experience which we’re sharing with her permission. Thanks, Val! And per Val’s suggestions, we’ve changed the format of the class, now called Understanding Puff Pastry, to include more hands-on experience. The next session is 13th July 2013. 

Pushing my way through the throng of Saturday shoppers, I find Cookery School at Little Portland Street tucked away down a quiet side street just a stone’s throw away from Oxford Street. By comparison, the school is an oasis of calm and I’m greeted by a delicious smell of freshly baked Gruyere puffs wafting from the kitchen. It’s a good start, as I’m here for the advance pastry class and gets me excited about what pastry delights I will be making.

The class is held in a small but perfectly well equipped space in the basement of the building. Although a group of six attended this relatively new class, the room could comfortably handle 12+ people, which is apparently the norm for most of their classes. It’s a very relaxed and informal environment and people from all abilities are welcomed into the classes.

The class was taught by an experienced French pastry chef [Ghalid Assyb], who has worked with inspiring chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, and artisan bakery, Baker & Spice. The main focus of the class was to make ‘proper’ puff pastry, which would be used to make a variety of savoury and sweet dishes, as well as dessert pastry that was destined for a scrumptious strawberry tart with crème patisserie. Chef demonstrated how to make both types of pastry with some involvement from the group as part of the practical process. Questions were encouraged and we soaked up his fountain of knowledge and many tips and tricks along the way. 

The group assisted in some prep for the toppings and fillings for the various pastry dishes, which was fun, but I wanted more hands-on with the pastry. I would have liked to have at least made some sweet pastry and perhaps done one roll, fold and turn on the puff pastry in order to cement what I’d learned by watching chef. Perhaps make less pastry dishes to make the time to do this? Nevertheless, it was a hugely enjoyable class, which was finished by the group sharing a glass of wine and tucking into pastry heaven. I went away from Cookery School at Little Portland Street with lots of inspiration, tips and a rather bulging, but satisfied, belly. 

You can read more of Val’s work on her beautiful blog, Hearty Food, “simple food, big on taste”!

We just finished week two of our Cook’s Certificate course. Again, lots of hard work, with Thursday putting them all to the test with their first ever assessment. Each student had to prepare a starter or soup with bread, a main course and cake for dessert, all based on what they had learnt in the first two weeks. It was a little stressful but the end results were extremely satisfying. That afternoon we took a trip to La Fromagerie in Marylebone for a cheese tasting and, to round off the week, we had Annie in for some First Aid training. Roll on week three - we’re so very impressed with our students!

You can find more photos and stories from our Cook’s Certificate in our earlier post from last week and on our Facebook page. And get the full details of our Cook’s Certificate in Food and Wine on our website.