Ashburton Coookery School

The real reason for going to Devon was to spend a day on the Gastro extra course at Ashburton Cookery School. This was a one day course which we thought might be fun to do before middle sister has her baby and we'll not be able to escape together so easily.

And it was fun! We started with making a starter of curried mussel soup. A nice light soup packed with flavour. Although neither of us were too keen on muscle so it was a bit more of a curried veg soup with the odd mussel in it! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it. We also made yummy bread, which came out really well. A lot better than my bread normally does! I felt like I learnt quite a bit from the bread making bit as it's improved my confidence a lot and taught me a couple of tips.

Our main was pork medallions with braised fennel and a creamy taragon and haricot bean sauce. My only criticism of this was that the haricot beans weren't quite right with the meal to me but the sauce was lovely and the pork good to cook as it's not something I normally cook. Oh and this also came with a shallot tarte tatin! Yummers!! And another thing I've always wanted to make (tarte tatin that is) but haven't quite had the confidence to.

For pudding we griddled pineapple, peppered it, added passionfruit sorbet (which they showed us how to make) and a spiced syrup, which was lovely and had a great chilli kick. Plus a couple of extra bits. Although by this time a little full as we were eating all we made :)

Finally a picture of me and of instructors. On the right is Phil who was lovely and really helpful, on the left James, equally lovely and you might recognise him from the Restaurant on BBC2 or 'Out of the Frying Pan'.

Highly recommended, even if you are relatively confident just to pick up a few tips. I now feel much more confident about my seasoning as we were told that our seasoning was good :) I would definitely go for it also if you have no confidence in the kitchen as they do all levels of teaching and the instructors are great.