CLOSE TO HOME

Cooking to impress has its place, but with Rosemary Shrager at Swinton Park in North Yorkshire, students also learn how to cook the perfect steak and the best Yorkshire pudding. Shrager’s classes are fast and fun, and begin each day with bread-making. A typical morning on her Modern British course could include making asparagus and quails’ egg tarts, lamb wrapped in leeks and sausage-making. Swinton offers scenic walks and a walled garden with organic veggies. Two days is £560, four days is £1,000, with full board and wine. Details: 01765 680900, www.swintonpark.com.

Rick Stein’s recent travels have influenced the latest courses at his Padstow seafood cookery school. It now offers one-day lessons in French food, Thai or southern Indian fish dishes at £175 and a two-day course with recipes from Rick’s French Odyssey for £740, including two nights’ full board. A sevennight residential programme covers the finer points of boning and filleting, fish recipes and a patisserie masterclass. It costs £2,250, including full board and selected wines. Details: 01841 533466, www.rickstein.com.

For dinner party chefs the cookery school at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons is the Holy Grail. It’s pricey at £250 a day — £475 when Mr Blanc hosts nutrition days focusing on the GI diet — but it’s the world’s only school in the kitchen of a two-Michelin-star restaurant. New courses include canapés and apéritifs, bread-making and vegetarian dishes cooked with organic produce from Le Manoir’s garden. Junior cooks from 7 to 16 can attend La Petite Ecole at £200 a day, including lunch and chocolate tasting. Details: 01844 278881, www.manoir.com.

Ballymaloe, Ireland’s famed country house cookery school outside Cork, has courses as diverse as sushi made simple, and making butter, yoghurt and cheese. Prices start at £70 for half a day, to more than £6,000 for a 12-week residential certificate programme, recognised by the catering industry. Guest chefs hosting classes include Antony Worrall Thompson, Rachel Allen, Claudia Roden and Skye Gyngell. Details: 00 353 21 4646 785, www.cookingisfun.ie.

CONTINENTAL

Cook alongside a principéssa in an 18th-century palace at Ascoli Piceno in the southern Marche. Learn classic Italian dishes of meat, fish and pasta, using organic produce and wines from the principéssa Giulia’s estate. The price is £990 for three days’ full board, including wine with Taste-Italia, which also has day courses from £98 at its Essex base. Guest chefs include Gennaro Contaldo, Jamie Oliver’s mentor. Details: 01268 711445, www.taste-italia.com.

Less grand and more rustic than Ascoli Piceno, Villa Ravida at Menfi in southern Sicily is an 18th-century villa where the family produces award-winning olive oil. Relaxed cookery lessons take place in a courtyard round a huge marble table used by generations of pasta makers. Learn to cook stuffed focaccia, swordfish with pine nuts, lemon, raisins and herbs, plus sublime ice-creams and fresh pastas. A week’s full board, including all drinks and excursions with Tasting Places, costs £1,550. Details: 020-8964 5333, www.tastingplaces.com.

Get down and dirty treading grapes, or helping with the olive harvest, and learn some taverna favourites in cookery classes at the Vamos Houses in western Crete on selected dates with Inntravel (01653 617906, www.inntravel.co.uk). The cost is from £558 for one week’s self-catering, including flights. For more sophisticated Greek cooking, Tasting Places (see above) offers a week-long, nonpractical course this October on the food, wines, culture and history of Santorini with the Greek food expert Rosemary Barron, from £1,590, full board and all wines.

Stay on a French farm in the Orne countryside, a lesser-known corner of Normandy, and learn how to cook vegetarian dishes, including pizza, muesli and seasonal salads with artisan bakers Cécile and Thierry Hermeline. From £296 for two nights’ half-board. Details: 00 33 2 33 28 07 00, www.normandie-weekend.com.

Going to France with the family? Your children can learn to cook lunch (four morning sessions £200) with chef Vlado in the Dordogne while you relax with an apéritif at Le Domaine de Foncaudiãre, a sumptuous villa sleeping ten in Bergerac. From £6,985 to rent in peak season through A&K Villas. Details: 0845 0700618, www.abercrombiekent.co.uk.

The walking specialist operator Headwater offers gastronomic cycling and walking holidays in the Loire, Dordogne, Provence and Tuscany. Gourmet walking in the Goms Valley, Switzerland, involves fairly challenging hiking to hotels known for their cuisine. The cost is from £779, including flights. A Tuscany holiday, staying in a family-run hotel in the medieval village of Palazzuolo, includes olive oil and wine tastings and cookery demonstrations, and costs from £799 with flights. Details: 0870 0662650, www.headwater.com.

EXOTIC

Combine walking in the foothills of the Himalayas with learning about the local cuisine and cooking on a 12-night trek that costs from £678 with Village Ways (0845 0343399, www.villageways.com). For the less active, the India specialist Greaves Travel offers a week in Kerala, cooking southern Indian curries and visiting spice markets in Cochin combined with a three-night houseboat cruise with full board, from £1,540, including flights. Details: 0870 8502497, www.greavesindia.com.

A 12-day Walking, Whales & Wine tour of the Western Cape Province in South Africa with Kudu Travel is designed for hedonists who relish a rigorous hike before the next meal. The full-board package, with all drinks, includes a champagne sunset cruise, wine tastings, gourmet picnics and dinners in some of the Cape’s smartest restaurants, as well as a demanding trek up Table Mountain. From £2,190. Details: 01722 716167, www.kudutravel.com.

The Four Seasons cooking school at Chiang Mai in Thailand is in a wooden pavilion with wok stations. The day starts with a 7am trip to market, then it’s hands-on for a different session — spicy salads, health cuisine, Thai curries, or noodles. Students pay £85 a session and can invite a friend to lunch. ITC Classics has five nights, including flights, from £1,512. Details: 01244 355527, www.itcclassics.co.uk.

A trip to Sydney Fish Market is a must Down Under. A local chef and food writer accompanies a three-day tour, which includes seafood and barbecue classes. The trip costs £299 with On the Menu. Details: 0870 8998844, www.holidayonthemenu.com.

Prices are per person, excluding flights unless stated otherwise. Most cookery courses are suitable for beginners but basic kitchen-knife skills are recommended for hands-on classes. Many residential courses accept noncooking partners, usually at a discount.

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