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Summer Jams, Jellies and Cordials
Celebrate the arrival of the soft fruit of summer with a hands-on day making jams, jellies and cordials using soft fruit The day begins with tastings of Vivien’s jams, jellies and cordials. Vivien will explain the characteristics of traditional jams, jellies and cordials and demonstrate the simple stages of making these preserves. With a choice of recipes, we’ll prepare and make jams, jellies and cordials during the day. There will be recipes, jars and bottles to take home. Lunch is…
Introduction to Foraging
Explore the bounty of the countryside with this fun and informative wild food foray in the woods, fields and hedgerows around Vale House Kitchen. On this one-day course you’ll find and prepare wild foods gaining knowledge, skills and experience from expert forager and landscape ecologist, Adrian Boots. You’ll not only learn to identify common wild foods, but also landscape features, habitats, associated trees and plants species, their relationships and seasonality with wild food. Learn about the history from our ancient…
Beginners Cookery Day
Fancy getting a bit more confident in the kitchen? Our Beginners Cookery Day is the perfect course for you – complete novices absolutely welcome. Professional chef Kieran Lenihan will guide you through all the basic skills you need to start making simple, delicious meals with fabulous local and seasonal ingredients - from basic knife handling and the preparation of meat and fish, to the secrets of perfect seasoning. Kieran will also share some of his favourite recipes and his top…
Fish Cookery Day
Our one day fish cookery course starts with a brief introduction and talk on freshness, quality and how to buy the best fish. You’ll then get cooking, with a series of demonstration-led cookery lessons to give you the skills you need not only to prepare, but cook this wonderful food. Fish is one of the most exciting, challenging and delicious foods to cook with, but it’s also the easiest to get wrong. With that in mind, this course is designed…
Autumn Preserves
As the nights draw in and the trees shed their leaves, join us to preserve Autumn fruits and vegetables for the year ahead, using authentic recipes. During the day we’ll make one sweet and one savoury jam, a chutney and a fruit pickle. Learn how to source and preserve with the best ingredients, types of sugar and vinegar to use, how to successfully cook and pot up sweet and savoury preserves. There will be jars and recipes of each preserve…
Venison Butchery and Cookery Day
The premise for the design of the venison cookery day is that although the countryside is full of this fine, healthy meat, it’s often missing from the menu. This one day course will take you on a journey from field to fork. You’ll start with a talk and demonstration on how to skin and butcher a venison carcass. You’ll then have the chance to get involved hands-on, with a cookery session designed to show you how to get the most…