Cooking for Gap Year Jobs

Cooking for Gap Year Jobs - The Essential Course

This two-week hands on course covers key skills for competent cookery. Starting with basic knife skills and simple dishes, these busy cookery classes will show you much more than just the classic methods for stocks, sauces and pastry. New ingredients will be explored; tips on stylish presentation will be learnt along with guidelines for balanced menu planning, hints on preparing ahead and good kitchen organisation.

With lots of practice and encouraging teaching you will make different types of pastry and bread, learn the skills of fresh stock making, master sweet and savoury sauces, from a classic roux to a light reduction. Fresh pasta, soufflés, ice cream and sorbets, gelatine and chocolate work, meat and fish preparation are just some of the techniques you will learn. You will build a repertoire of different recipes crossing from modern trends and flavours to traditional classics.

During the early stages you will learn a variety of skills and techniques that will act as building blocks for the following days when you will progress to more advanced recipes and techniques.

Each day you will prepare a two or three course lunch, and the afternoon will be spent either preparing items for the following day or cooking something to take home.

The day starts at 10 am with coffee and homemade biscuits. During this time we chat about the day’s recipes and then start cooking at 10.15. The day finishes at 3.30. All ingredients and equipment are provided together with a folder of recipes and useful information. Although the course is non-residential, we can supply students with a list of local B&Bs.