Cooking in Castle Cary

I attended the Food of Course cooking school for 3.5 weeks held near Castle Cary in Somerset, England. It's a four week course (I had to leave early for our family trip) held in the farm house of Louise and Roger Hutton. Normally there are 6 students taught by Lou, but this time there were only four of us. 

I shared a room with Kathryn, a 21 year old English girl who is doing history of art at Manchester and lives near Castle Cary. Kathryn has plenty of cooking experience and was by far the most qualified. We got along really well as roomies and she always helped me out with cooking. Then there were two boys. Jordi, a 18 year old from Barcelona who just finished his first year of university, was fast and had cooking experience but was a bit of a class clown, always cracking jokes. Andrew, a 20 year old English guy who is studying marine biology at a university in Nova Scotia, had zero knowledge of a kitchen and was on the quiet side.

Making Creme brûlée

Then there was me. I only had super basic cooking experience of things like pasta and cookies, so I was pretty uncertain about how things would turn out. 

Lou was our teacher. She has been running this course for over a decade and was great. She had a giant book that she has put together of recipes and the course schedule and helpful information that we used for everything and got to keep. Lou was intimidating as she was pretty OCD about rules, etiquette, quality and cleanliness, but that was good in a teacher who was preparing us for if we ever wanted to cook professionally. She could also get frustrated, but in general she was patient, knowledgable and helpful. 

Roger is Lou's husband. At work during the day, he would join us for dinner. Full of information, he loved to talk and teach us things and made for very interesting table conversation. He would also help us clean up after dinner, and his super speed would make our lives much easier. I really liked him.

Moira is Lou's friend, an older Irish woman who helped out during the first week when Karen was gone and subbed on the day Lou had to go to a funeral. Very sweet and gentle, she works as an assistant to a caterer and was Jordi's favorite.

Karen was Lou's assistant. She came every morning to help prepare the trays with ingredients on them so we didn't have to go find and measure everything. It was really helpful to have to stuff set out for us, but Karen didn't always give the best advice. 

The course was held in Lou's house, a beautiful remodeled old farm house.

Lemon poppyseed cake I baked

I loved the house, which was cozy and surrounded by beautiful countryside and lots of cows. The kitchen was just like a normal kitchen, with an oven and an agar. Then there was an extra oven in the hallway, a laundry/wash up room that served as a mini kitchen, a nice big store room where all the ingredients were stored and prepped, and a lovely garden with herbs and vegetables. 

So those are the people and the place, now the class itself. 

The cooking class was very intensive. Here is our average day:

9 am: start class. Lou talks for a bit on a subject and maybe demos some skills. After that, we all get assigned a different dish or two and start cooking. For example, the subject might be mince meat and I made a chilli while someone else lasagna. 

2-ish: Sit down for lunch outside and eat what we had cooked. Typically Lou didn't join us, but Karen or Moira did. After lunch we cleaned up tr kitchen 

20 minute break after lunch clean up 

3-ish: start the afternoon session. Everyone helps with dinner prep, sometimes we prepared things for the next day.

5 or 5:30 ish: End dinner prep and start break 

6: the two people on dinner duty (we roared and went in different pairs) would come back to the kitchen. They would have to unload the dishwasher, set the table, sweep and mop, make a schedule for dinner and then cook. 

7:30: everyone in the dining room for wine and canapés 

7:45: sit down for starters 

8:00: serve main, then dessert. Then the students and Roger clean up 

9:30: typical time we finished clean up 

Group Photo (Jordi left early to go home)
We were doing the cooking and cleaning that 6 people normally did, but with only four of us. We were very busy and had to work hard but we covered so much that it was worthwhile. We also had some special days. One day Roger gave us a wine lesson. We also had an Indian lady come and teach us about Indian cooking one morning we also took a trip to a nearby town to go to the farmers' market and pick out fresh fish (I made calamari). 

During our little bit of free time, I would read, nap, go on jogs, watch game of thrones with Kathryn, or just relax.

On the weekends, we were free to go or stay. The first two weekends I went to Winchester. The first time Nathan came to visit and I showed him around. The second time my mom was visiting my grandparents and we took my grandmother to a Goan festival in London and enjoyed some Goan food. The third weekend I went to Kathryn's house near Cheddar and we went into Bristol on Saturday to shop and see Despicable Me 2. 

We each had to do our own dinner as a kind of final exam. This meant finding the recipes in cookbooks, pricing the ingredients to make sure we were within our budgets, getting the menu approved by Lou as following good menu rules, find the ingredients in the storeroom/ making a shopping list, then prepping and cooking the dinner all on our own. My dinner was on Tuesday night the last week so my parents, Lorelei and Chantal came. They had all arrived in England on Monday, besides my mother who had been in Winchester already. That meant I had to cook for 9 people. Luckily I had help setting up and playing. This was my menu: 

Canapés: filo pastry rolls of asparagus and prosciutto, plus spiced nuts 

My final dinner

Starter: pear and chickory salad with walnuts and Gorgonzola 

Main: roasted rack of lamb served on couscous with roasted tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant 

Dessert: homemade lemon ice cream served in brandy snap baskets with raspberries 

It was stressful to make it all but really great to see my family and get to show them what I had learned. I was a little slow getting all the courses out and didn't get to sit down much, but overall I think it was pretty successful. After dinner I packed my stuff up and drove back to Winchester with my family

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