COOKING Up A Storm
Cornwall is home to a vast array of fresh, sustainable and short travelled produce. Not only will you find it in everything from fine dining restaurants to the chippy on the corner, but you can also forage to stock up in your own kitchen. Wild garlic, black mustard flowers, sea spaghetti, apple mint and mushrooms - the world outside your doorstep has endless opportunities to develop your taste buds. But how to learn how to recognise these new and exciting ingredients? More important than knowing what to pick, is knowing what not to pick. Dotted around the county are experts who will teach the complete newbie to the most expert of chefs about the Cornish countryside and how we can best utilise the nature in our kitchen. At the Fat Hen, a wild cookery school based in Penzance, owner Caroline Davey works alongside talented chefs to create fabulous dishes showcasing ingredients sourced from the wild. Aiming to break down the barriers between the kitchen, the outdoors and the dining table, Fat Hen has constantly found itself winning awards and made countless listicles by prestigious publications such as The Telegraph and Countryfile Magazine. If you’ve never picked wild food before, there are also courses run by Cornish Wild Food that will soon have you confident in identifying and harvesting hedgerow treats. Choose a gentle foraging with the whole family or an adventure followed by a wild feast. Some might also get excited about the prospect of the school’s ‘Wild Gin Workshops’, where expert foraging instructor Matt Vernon will come to your home or organise an al fresco meeting at a beautiful outside spot to teach you how to craft your own gin using foraged ingredients.
But flora is only part of what you can harvest and consume. The marine life along the Cornish coast is myriad of exciting additions to the plate. Cornish fishermen have a list of 63 types of common fish and shellfish that they are hoping will bait the hook in local waters. Celebrity chef Rick Stein started his seafood empire in the 70s and has since developed numerous restaurants as well as a cookery school. Here, you can start the day with a trip out to the sea with local Padstow fishermen before heading back to the kitchen with your catch to learn how to prepare and cook it. But it’s not just about seafood at Rick Stein’s, they also do lots of other interesting day courses, one dish workshops, tasting evenings, children’s cookery and a rather fun ‘Cook your own dinner party’ evening. On the Roseland Peninsula, Philleigh Way is a contemporary cookery school whose ethos is to teach, inspire and delight. Set next to stables, a church and an excellent village pub, the cookery school is located on the Roseland Peninsula, bordered by the Atlantic and the deep creeks of the Fal. Depending on the course you have chosen you may well be foraging or fishing for your lunch on the banks of the river, or cooking some of Cornwall’s best produce with top-level chefs in our state-of-the-art kitchen. Whether you’re developing your taste buds to the extreme or if you just want to learn how to prepare fish purchased at the local fishmonger, Cornwall is home to the sustainable, short-travelled ingredients that the world so sorely needs us to use. After all, why buy something that has travelled across the globe when you can find it right outside
your Cornish front door? fathen.org | rickstein.com/school cornishwildfood.co.uk | philleighway.co.uk
COOKING UP A STORM
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