Leiths Cookery Week preview

A few months ago, I signed up to do a week long cookery course at Leiths School of Food and Wine. For the last few years I’ve toyed with the idea of cooking full time but I’ve never committed – mostly because I couldn’t afford to take the time off to train, partly because I would hate to work chef hours, and also because training to be a chef is both difficult and expensive. I’m very much a home cook – give me a cake, a pie, or a stew and I’m happy, but put me in front of snail porridge or sea urchin foam and my appetite all but disintegrates.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I decided a week dedicated to one of the things I love most would be a fair compromise. So I booked a week long intermediate course at Leiths – one of the most (if not the most) prestigious cookery schools in the world. Leiths does year long courses for people looking to become chefs – and counts Lorraine Pascale and Gizzi Erskine amongst its alumni. They also do week and two week courses for home cooks, enthusiasts and anyone looking to brush up on their skills and knowledge.

I pondered which course to do – and I really considered doing the advanced course, but opted for the intermediate course because I liked the sound of the food on that week more. The advanced course has foie gras and ballotines and other fancy things – while the white intermediate  course has enriched bread doughs and meat and fish preparation etc.

Anyway, I’ll be reviewing each day of the course every day next week! Hope you find the reviews useful – whether you’re thinking of doing a cooking course or if you’re just keen to pick up some of the tips I’ll be sharing from my week, hopefully the posts will be interesting!

Here’s a sneak peak of day one…

Disclosure: I contacted Leiths about their courses and arranged for a discount on their intermediate course in exchange for an honest review of my experience, which I have chronicled over a series of posts.