Specialities
A relative newbie on the cookery school block, Limewood’s basement cookery school (a transformed billiards room) is an intimate place to learn new recipes. Sprung from the country-house hotel’s head-turning restaurant Hartnett, Holder & Co, the school is affectionately known as HH&Co Backstage, and shares the same convivial, creative home-cooking ethos of Limewood super-chefs Angela Hartnett and Luke Holder. It’s more (luxe) family kitchen than traditional cookery school – a long wooden dining table is at the heart, with candy-apple red KitchenAids and weighty Le Creuset casseroles, alongside the sleek Panasonic induction hobs. There’s a central teaching area, where head chef Iain Longhorn and his tutoring team deliver the low-down on the topic, before guests put their new skills into practice on their own stations. The mainstay of the day classes is seasonal country cookery – from smoking, charcuterie and game to cakes and puds – with a nod to the pastas and risottos of Italy coming care of the Hartnett heritage, and frequent guest-chef appearances from the likes of Rick Stein or Tom Kerridge. The real selling point of this school, however, is the setting. It should be obligatory to combine any course with a stay in the decadent bedrooms of this tranquil New Forest hotel and a dip in the outdoor spa pool.
