Blink and you’ll miss Ashburton Cookery School as you drive along the main road through the tiny town of Ashburton in Devon. Ashburton is the sort of place where houses have names rather than numbers–and if there are numbers, then they’re typically very small and under the name plate–so you have to do a bit of hunting, but it’s well worth it. Trust me.

My Christmas present from Dave was a weekend cookery course at Ashburton. I dithered for days over which course to choose, but eventually my love of Italian food prevailed. (I’m hoping to go back later this year for the Chef Skills course.)

The day before the course started I zoomed off down the M5 to Devon somewhat nervously. Would my skills be good enough for the course? And more importantly, would I get there in one piece? (This was the longest journey I’d undertaken since passing my test and only my second solo trip on a motorway!)

After arriving at the cookery school and getting settled in—I had a lovely attic room, original oak beams and all—I joined some of the other students for a luscious cream tea complete with home-made jams. I’m afraid that I can’t remember everyone’s names, but somewhat amusingly I met a girl called Lucy who was also from Bristol. About a mile down the road from me, in fact. We’ve probably crossed paths a number of times as we shared a number of favourite foodie haunts. I love these little coincidences. Serendipity, no?

We kicked off things on Saturday morning with a meet and greet over coffee—again, I can’t remember anyone’s name, sorry!–and met our chef-tutor, Stuart. Stuart had quite an impressive pedigree… he’d worked for Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay amongst other big names and more recently had been head chef at a rather large gastropub before starting his teaching career. I have to say, he really made the weekend for me. He taught so well, always imparting information clearly and with ever-present humour. Lovely chap.

After going through the dishes that we’d be making over the weekend—complete with a mis-en-place list and an extra copy of the recipe booklet for scribbling notes on—we started getting acquainted with our kitchen. There are two kitchens at Ashburton: one in the main house and the second in a purpose-built room in the garden where we were. The garden kitchen looked out over a small courtyard with paths leading to the kitchen garden which supplies some of the produce for the school and a small glass-walled dining room. Even in February it was pretty and I can imagine it being absolutely stunning in the Summer. I wish I’d taken pictures, but I felt a bit self-conscious snapping away (which explains some of the slightly dodgy photos later on.)

On Saturday’s menu were: Stuffed sardines with fennel, pine nuts and balsamic dressed salad, traditional Italian meatballs with tomato sauce, linguine vongole and tiramisu.

The first thing we needed to do was make a large vat of vegetable stock which would be used the next day for a wild mushroom risotto. This was a demonstration as it made far more sense for there to be just one pot simmering away. During this I realised that I’d been cutting vegetables too finely when I’ve previous attempted stock. They should be really large chunks. I learned lots of little things about all the stocks and wound up being so inspired that the first thing I did when I got home was to go to the farm shop and pick up a huge sack of beef bones. I’ve made rather a lot of stock since Ashburton!

Next was another demonstration; this time for tiramisu custard. At this stage I started to fret slightly about when I’d be allowed to do something, and was promptly handed a large bowl of eggs to separate. My separating technique is somewhat babyish, so I was a little embarrassed, but quickly got over that when I saw the cream. Oh my god, the cream! It was from a local farm and I’ve never seen such thick and yellow double cream in all my life. Amazing stuff.

We discovered during the demo the importance of using a clean, cold pan for cooking the egg/cream mixture. It isn’t just enough to rinse out the original pan, you need to use a new one so that the custard cooks very slowly to avoid scrambling. If your custard does scramble horribly, you can keep cooking it until entirely scrambled then blend and pass through a sieve as Michael Caines at Gidleigh Park apparently does as a matter of course for all his custard bases. (It ensures that every last speck of egg is cooked through for safety.)

Next up was a group project. Hurrah! A little bit of cooking! A rich tomato sauce made in one of the biggest paella pans that I’ve ever seen. One of the nicest things about Ashburton is that loads of ingredients were already prepped for us–and in some cases weighed out too–which was really rammed home to me when I saw that Stuart had already skinned and de-seeded 5.5kg of tomatoes for us. This sort of convenience really sped up the day and let’s face it… cooking is way more fun when someone’s done the tedious bits for you, and also when you don’t have to wash up. Oh, did I forget to mention that? We didn’t have to do any washing up at all, which made the weekend utter bliss.

Lucy and I nursed the sauce for four hours on our stove and then it got set aside for use later on in the afternoon. This sauce was a beautiful illustration of how perfect produce is the cornerstone of Italian cuisine. It didn’t contain any seasoning or added sugar and it was sublime, even for a dedicated salt-hound like myself. Oh, before I forget, we put the tomato vines in the pan to impart even more flavour, something which Heston did in his recent TV series.

And now, some actual cooking! For lunch we prepared stuffed sardines with fennel, pine nuts and balsamic-dressed salad (pictured above). I’ve always been wary of sardines–too many tiny bones–but Stuart assured me that if I missed any with the tweezers that they’d soften in the oven. I ripped out the spines of the butterflied fillets and then spent a few minutes squinting at the fish, pulling out bones with tweezers and then sandwiching them together with the wonderfully fragrant stuffing. If you didn’t want to use fennel in the stuffing–and I swear it’s delicious–you could use some sauteed spinach or cubes of roasted butternut squash.

After lunch we set to work to make some gorgeous little meatballs which had a soft, melting texture thanks to the ricotta cheese in the mixture. As a group we portioned, weighed and rolled the meatballs which was great fun and was totally in harmony with the family-orientated aspects of Italian cookery.

While the meatballs chilled we finished off the tiramisu. With even more of that luscious cream, believe it or not. The vanilla-speckled custard was beaten with some mascarpone and then a pint of double cream was whipped into the mixture. We passed the bowl around to share the arm-ache while Steve–I remembered a name!–who had never cooked before soaked sponge fingers in a mixture of coffee and Tia Maria. We went for a family-style presentation and layered it all up in a huge earthenware dish, finishing off with some curls of dark chocolate. We all sighed longingly as it disappeared off to the walk-in to chill and the meatballs returned.

I’ve discovered that when you’re on a cookery course you spend the entire day eating, or at least that’s how it felt to me. Aside from the dishes we were preparing we sampled all the ingredients and had a few proper tastings. I remember having some particularly fabulous balsamic vinegars; The meatballs were to be a tasting-sized snack, and when I saw the size of the portion my eyes nearly popped out. It was more of a meal than a snack! They were simmered in some of the tomato sauce we’d made earlier.

Our next task was to make some pasta dough in preparation for tortellini the next day. We added a decent grating ot nutmeg to the dough as they were going to be filled with roasted squash. Yum!

Our last dish of the day was Linguine Vongole, or in our case Liguine Arribattia as Lucy was allergic to shellfish and I just don’t like clams. If you have your tomato sauce made in advance as we did, this is a really swift and tasty dinner. We added plenty of chilli flakes to spice things up and the pasta was delicious with a nice glass of crisp white wine. (There was also a dinner tasting session of several different wines. God, I slept well after all of that.)

Despite groaning waistbands we all made room for the tiramisu that Stuart triumphantly brought in. Very, very rich and creamy but unlike other tiramisus I’ve had, it wasn’t overly sweet. I guess you could describe it as ‘grown-up’ due to the bitterness of the coffee and dark chocolate shards. I’ve since adapted this tiramisu recipe to make a limoncello version which was very successful.

As the sun went down over the yardarm we sipped wine, rehashed the day’s cooking and generally gossiped about food. A fabulous day!

Tune in tomorrow for Sunday’s menu.

Ashburton Cookery School
Hare’s Lane Cottage
76 East Street
Ashburton
TQ13 7AX