Perfectly timed for the start of the British barbecue season, these courses are now running most weekends and let you get to grips with a number of BBQ classics in an attractive, previously under-utilised, outdoor space by the side of The Grand which looks up toward street level. Rather appropriately, the launch event was preceded by weather extreme enough to warrant a reassuring email to the effect that it would be going ahead. The team have done a great job of weather proofing the space though so there should be no worries about the great British weather intervening in your fun.

The launch event started with some hands on pizza dough stretching by way of illustrating the versatility of a barbecue with some members of the audience more successful than others. I dodged the public trial and just settled for a good look at the results. The second demonstration was rather more traditional as we were introduced to some beautiful ribeye steaks. These were cooked back to back on gas and traditional charcoal barbecues, both delivering bags of flavour and smoky character.

I’ve not gone through a course with Marc Williams yet but it’s clear he’s extremely knowledgeable, approachable and enthusiastic. The short demos that we enjoyed were certainly enough to pique my interest in this intriguing new concept. Weber Academy at The Grand Cookery School courses are available to book now.

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I actually took part in a tester session for one of these a few months ago so had some idea of what to expect when I joined up. The equipment and ingredient list arrived in plenty of time to get prepared for the evening’s entertainment, which would be centred around producing a Thai green curry. Rather convenient given that I still have possession of a good amount of quality Thai produce thanks to a recent delivery from Zaap Thai, whose recipe kit I was lucky enough to sample recently. With all my supplies in order, I did my best impression of mis-en-place, in this case featuring a laptop perched on a microwave as a more unusual addition to the setup, I opened a beer and was ready to go.

The lesson started on time and with appropriately high production values, as you’d expect from a Virtual Grand Cookery School, before head tutor Andrew Dixon took the screen and introduced himself. I’ve had the pleasure of several courses with Andrew now and his inhabiting a laptop was no inhibition to his easy and approachable manner, with participants’ microphones remaining open to make sure everyone was at the same point and had their questions answered. Being a good pupil, I’d done a good bit of prep in advance so was able to take things at a more leisurely pace, relaxing with that beer while my classmates caught up.

I’d decided to use chicken thighs (decided might be a strong word for raiding the freezer) as the protein for my green curry and it didn’t take long before we had things simmering away nicely, with time to concentrate on getting some rice well rinsed and ready to go as well as trimming some herbs and chillis with which to decorate our creations. This took place over less than 2 hours, running perfectly to schedule while allowing Andrew plenty of time to answer queries, something he’s extremely able to do with a clear and concise manner and a huge amount of knowledge. By the time we’d finished, all the participants, who’d variously been using chicken, fish or vegetables as the basis of their curry and receiving advice bespoke to the chosen ingredient, had their dinner ready to go – in one case having prepared a meal for six people!

Obviously a virtual Grand Cookery School is going to feel a bit different to standing in a room with your fellow participants, but they’ve done as much as possible in the circumstances to approximate that experience, with the modest £29 price for instruction reflecting that. It would be fantastic to have the option to order the ingredients for delivery, and hopefully once logistical challenges are met this is something The Grand Cookery School will consider. Obviously I can’t wait to get back into a cookery school that includes someone to do the washing up for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and the meal it delivered.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for this PR sample experience.

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While Vanilla Black may not be a York landmark these days, its reputation was born on Swinegate before transplanting itself successfully to London where its range of playfully misleadingly titled dishes won wide acclaim. While I’m trying my best to look for positives in this situation, there’s little getting away from the permanent closure of Vanilla Black’s existing site in London, which leads us to the introduction of virtual cookery lessons from a vegetarian icon. Obviously I wish VB all the best for a successful reopening at some point when the centre of London is a less financially precarious place but for now I’ll happily take advantage of the opportunity to broaden my own horizons.

Vanilla Black Cook & Learn is a series of cooking lessons and ingredient boxes that can be enjoyed either live under the tutelage of VB co-founder Andrew Dargue or via a pre-recorded video, all the more convenient for those of us subject to the sleep patterns of toddlers. With an ingredient box for a meal for two plus access to the video lesson at around £20, it was hardly a difficult thing to get on board with so in due course I was rifling through a mix of vacuum packed and fresh ingredients while balancing my phone on top of the microwave ready for it to impart much knowledge.

I’ve now done two of these lessons, the object of the first being to produce a “Twisted Chip Butty” and the second a “Stir Fry”. Unsurprisingly neither of these end products resembled the dish that inspired it, and the techniques involved and snippets of knowledge were eminently transferable and scattered with memorable catch phrases (repeat after me, frying is drying). The Chip Butty took all of the ingredients you’d expect in that dish and reconfigured them into a refined evolution: the ketchup becoming filling, chips replacing bread, bread becoming croutons, curry sauce a vegan mayo and vinegar a powder. It was a balanced and satisfying thing to eat that, and while certainly unconventional, it didn’t sacrifice quality for novelty.

The second of the lessons we booked promised a “Stir Fry”, though obviously at this point we had little idea of what to expect. As it turned out, this was a marginally more conventional dish in as much as it did feature vegetables that had been fried, though in a pan rather than a wok to acknowledge the inability of a domestic hob to faithfully replicate that technique. Beyond that things leapt a little sideways into amusing/delicious deviations that made a surprising substitution for the noodles and gave rice a place on the plate….using Rice Krispies as a base. Much as I’d love to say more, it feels little cruel to ruin the surprise for those yet to book onto this one, that’s still just about available.

While trapped at home I can see few more entertaining ways to exploit culinary learning that inviting Andrew Dargue virtually into your kitchen. Your preference for eating meat or other wise is entirely incidental to how much enjoyment can be derived from these cooking lessons, which reinforced in me a sense of regret at my lack of curiosity about Vanilla Black when it was resident in the city. Money might be tight for many but Vanilla Black Cook and Learn represents a notably good value confluence of sustenance, entertainment and learning.

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Even now, it seems scarcely believable that it’s pushing 18 months since The Grand opened the doors to its impressive new cookery school with a suitably “Grand” party that was followed up by an evening cooking steaks for us to get a feel of how the place would function. After those initial flirtations, I was lucky enough to attend a full day course preparing seafood there and have been keeping close touch with developments ever since, working with them in various capacities.

With those fond memories still strong in my mind, I was very happy to receive an invitation to attend an evening to mark this happy occasion by sampling one of the school’s most popular classes, the beef Wellington. This version of the class was stripped back a bit to fit the time constraints of the evening and our collective attention span, but still a great opportunity to learn this classic dish.

The evening started with drinks and canapés that head tutor Andrew Dixon knocked out as effortlessly as one would expect from a man who held three rosettes back when restaurateur was his chosen profession. These served as the perfect background for a chat about how we would be working together on the dishes we were about to prepare. For the sake of expediency, a few things had been done for us, leaving us with just a healthy slug of chopping to do before combining the fruits of that effort with pre-baked potato. The result of this later in the evening was “Ultimate Loaded Potatoes”, a recipe that could be adapted any number of ways to recycle baked potatoes into hemispheres of comfort rammed with cheese, bacon, onion and anything else that takes one’s fancy.

The star of the evening would always be the Wellington – something I’ve never attempted in my own home – and I was correspondingly keen to prise open its secrets under expert tuition. While I obviously understand the concept of this dish, it was great fun to get to grips with its subtleties. With our pieces of beef fillet sealed to our satisfaction, we smeared them generously with a chicken mousse that our tutor had substituted for the more conventional mushroom duxelles. This was in addition to a layer of pancake that I hadn’t realised was traditional, accented here with tarragon. A puff pastry coat completed the assembly with a generous egg wash before we decorated with a pastry lattice, which represented minimal effort thanks to a roller that made short work of prettifying our creation.

With our efforts completed, we retired to drink a toast to the birthday that had brought us all together and enjoy the fruits of our labours. My companion for the evening was Kate from Avocado Events, with whom I’ve worked before on several events, and we agreed that our respective efforts were absolutely top notch thanks to the top quality tutelage.

Back in March I obviously had no idea that it would be pushing August before it was appropriate to be posting this and the ongoing situation for the hospitality industry was becoming clearer. I’m happy to see that The Cookery School at The Grand is open for business as of 1st August, Yorkshire Day appropriately enough and, while things may seem a bit different in the early days of reopening, I don’t see that its appeal will be diminished in the least. Welcome back and a (somewhat belated) Happy Grand Cookery School Birthday!

Disclaimer: No charge was made to attend this event. Opinions are impartial.

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I had an excited browse through the course list and found a Yorkshire Game Masterclass that was scheduled to run for four hours. I’ve visited the cookery school a few times before, though not participated in a course, so had no trouble finding its new home just off of the main square. It’s an informal space with a central island featuring a collection of ovens and hobs on which to cook. It’s worth noting that these require the participants to take a few steps away from their cooking station when heat is required, creating a natural mingling of course participants throughout the day.

The Game Masterclass started with coffee and tea as the group started to make one another’s acquaintance and take in their surroundings. The main cooking station for Gilly to demonstrate from was dressed with some fantastic produce for us to work with through the day and we quickly met Deb who would be assisting for the day. Little Deb might be diminutive but her talents are large, having featured with Giles Coren on ‘Back in time for dinner’. She’s exactly the kind of calm talent you want keeping things ticking along in the background and is surely due another turn in the spotlight before too long.

Our first task for the day was to get some dough together for a soda bread, quickly achieved together as we cooperated in small groups to get it in the oven ready to accompany the first fruits of our labours. With that done, we set about making sure we were properly equipped for the coming activities. We were going to be doing a lot of knife work and since there’s nothing more likely to cut you than a blunt knife, it was important to learn how to keep the edge of our blade in tip top shape. The truism that blunt knives are more likely to cut comes from their propensity to slip off of the task in hand into, well, your hand so Malton Cookery School partners with Zwilling knives to provide each of the cooking stations with a full complement of decent knives for all possibilities.

A little bit of knife safety goes a long way (I’ve the scars to prove it) so in a group with an unknown skill level, it’s a good place to start. We were shown how to safely work with blades and what the intended purpose of each one in our block was along with how to keep them sharp.

I’ve enjoyed every cookery course I’ve been on but oddly the less specific the content is the better as far as value is concerned. It’s undoubtedly fun making a delicious plate of food with techniques you were previously unfamiliar with, but it’s transferability that ultimately represents greater application for the lessons learned. This is something that is clear in the approach taken by Gilly at Malton, the knife skills we went through being widely applicable to everyday cooking. Similarly jointing a partridge, as we next were taught was fundamentally the same as dealing with any similarly anatomied bird.

By now our exertions were making us peckish so we used the last of our energies to make a carpaccio to enjoy with the bread with which we’d started our day, warm from the oven now. After the school resonated to the sound of wooden rolling pins gently flattening meat to cover a surprising area, we tucked in and the room fell silent for a few moments as we signified our appreciation.

The next hour or so passed in a whirlwind of activity, trimming pork loin to roast and venison to roll into a Wellington that would eventually resemble the most refined sausage rolls I’ve ever eaten. We also created some rather “rustic” looking gnocchi to go with the pork that ended up resembling a fricassee.

As well as all that, we got a plate to the table featuring that partridge from the beginning of the day, pan frying the breast while also sampling some confited thighs that Deb had sneakily been applying herself to in the background. What really gave this one depth was the sauce that we’d been talked through creating, layering up flavours using stock, cider, herbs, bacon and a few other things. Again, this was a process that was easily repeatable at home and didn’t require slavish copying of amounts from a recipe.

It’s easy to forget that this was only a four hour course; we packed in so much both in terms of the output of our labours and learnings to take away. The day finished with the opportunity to enjoy all of the treats we’d created with a glass of wine while reflecting on the dishes and techniques we’d learned. Both the layout of the school and the talented, encouraging staff pushed the participants toward learning and getting involved. I’ll use those lessons regularly and think of this day when I do, Malton Cookery School certainly does a great job of representing Malton’s culinary credentials.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for my attendance, opinions are impartial.

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Mak Tok have spent the last two years building up a sterling reputation for chilli pastes that rely on the founder’s Malaysian heritage and for flavour and character. “Mak Tok” is Malay for Grandmother, the name being adopted in honour of kind hearted lady whose love and enthusiasm set the Mak Tok founder on the path that would lead him to set out to create the perfect chilli paste.

After two years of growth, it was only appropriate to celebrate so Mak Tok teamed up with the newly relocated Malton Cookery School for that second birthday and I made my way up on a Saturday night to join in the fun. The event started rather unusually for a chef’s table with a musical number from the multitalented Mak Tok founder and his guitar. He then mixed a selection of finely cut vegetables and fruits with rice crackers for texture and a dressing to make “Auspicious Salad”. Plenty of fresh coriander helped make up a fresh tasting salad with carrot and apple that set the scene for the next course of traditional Malaysian Satay.

Satay skewers might not be the most surprising choice for a Malaysian meal, but these were well balanced and a good way to show off Mak Tok’s chilli paste. Next up we were given a demonstration of how to put together exemplary coconut rice to go with a Rendang Curry. The garnishes with this dish brought it all together, notably some dried anchovies were rammed with enough enjoyment for me to find out where they had been sourced.

The food was rounded off by a brace of desserts featuring glutinous rice and tapioca. The flavours were certainly crowd pleasing and the guys gave an element of theatre by having us roll our own rice balls. While the texture of tapioca is forever divisive, the toasted palm sugar served with them here was enough to win over a few fence-sitters.

To finish the evening, our host pulled out another stringed instrument, this time mounted horizontally to perhaps allow the busy chef to take the weight off of his feet for a moment. The team at Malton Cookery School did a great job in making us welcome while ensuring the Mak Tok guys had the platform to show off their product and skills to their full potential. It’s going to be fun keeping an eye on where they head from here. Happy birthday!

Disclaimer: No charge was made for my attendance, opinions are impartial.

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York Cookery School has been teaching the good people of York the finer points of cookery since 2012, using a variety of well regarded tutors to provide characterful and informative courses. I’ve attended before to learn about fish cookery from the incomparable Steph Moon so had a good expectation of how the day would pan out. The tutor for the sushi course would be Dan Graham whose CV includes making the final of Masterchef: The Professionals and a stint at Malton’s well regarded Talbot Hotel as head chef. He gained his sushi skills at a high end restaurant in London from a Sushi Master and recently placed well in the Kikkoman Masters competition, plenty to suggest he knows his subject!

The four hour York Cookery School sushi course packed in a lot of detail, starting with a chat about the care and effort that goes into sushi rice. Dan had thoughtfully pre-rinsed our rice and weighed it out to speed things along and make sure we’d have ample time later on to assemble our own sushi. With our rice cooked and happily cooling ready for later manipulation, we settled in for a chat about the origins of sushi and it’s preparation. We were shown how to create our own seasoning for the sushi rice but I’m afraid I opted to take the lazy route and use the preprepared stuff while coming to terms with my naivety in not realising that sushi rice was typically seasoned with a mix of rice vinegar, sugar and salt.

Now it was time to get stuck into some fish prep, which Dan thankfully led from the front. We had tuna, salmon and halibut to go about after a detailed demo. We were told how to cut across to the grain of the fish and maximise the return on the piece by using trimmings to create the filling for California Roll and diced flesh for Gunkan Maki (“Battleship Sushi”). I was initially suspicious that the amount of fish allocated to me wouldn’t go far enough, but I would soon be proved thoroughly wrong. We also put together a sweet rolled omelette with which to assemble nigiri. The technique for layering and rolling the egg is something I’ll definitely replicate at home and it looked lovely when wrapped with a strand of seaweed to secure it to the rice.

With our fish now trimmed to the appropriate sizes and shapes, it was time to start building some finished bites. With damped hands to combat the best efforts of the sticky rice, we set about building nigiri, California rolls and battleship sushi, the more adventurous of us even knocking out inside-out California rolls under the expert tutelage. We also put together some a beautiful yuzu based marinade for our halibut and a sesame dip to go with some beef fillet. Dan had quickly roasted some beef to deliciously rare for us to reinforce the point that sushi is most certainly not just raw fish, as is commonly misconceived.

The amount of sushi I went home with rather took me by surprise and comfortably made a couple of meals for us. With a bit of effort to augment it, I could have hosted a few friends for dinner and taken an opportunity to show off too. The course comes in at £110 which feels like a very fair price for the four hours of tuition and the mound of food I returned home with. I also took great pleasure in being reminded how much I enjoy sushi and look forward to developing a sushi habit again in the near future.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for my attendance. Opinions are impartial

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There are a few cookery schools dotted around Yorkshire, but this is the most grand new cookery school I’m aware of inside York’s walls and, having had the opportunity to look around, it’s certainly an impressive facility. There are 16 well equipped cooking stations that have enough space for either solo cooking or more collaborative efforts as the occasion demands, along with a comfortable dining area in which to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The demonstration area also offers enough seating for all participants to get up close with the tutor and ensure they understand what their own efforts should resemble. It’s particularly pleasing to see that the facility is also accessible with provision made to ensure that wheelchair users are able to enjoy all elements of the courses on offer.

In charge of the courses is Andrew Dixon, who joins with decades of experience in catering and hospitality including, notably, earning 3 Rosettes within ten months of opening a restaurant with rooms in 1999. These days Andrew is less focussed on awards than delivering an accessible, enjoyable and educational experience for course attendees. Browsing the courses available shows an impressive breadth of options that will also feature guest tutors. Already lined up are renowned forager Alysia Vasey and bestselling food writer Sabrina Ghayour.

I’ll be joining a course when things have kicked off so I’ll update you then. For the moment I’m just looking forward to seeing the doors open to another exciting player in York’s food offering.

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