Some news for Shakespeare: music isn’t the food of love; food is.
If you’re stuck for romantic inspiration this Thursday, fed up with the usual restaurant rigmarole, or too terrified to cook for your Valentine at home, a cookery class might be just the answer you’re looking for.
An evening spent discovering a new skill together can be a hugely rewarding experience – and a much more memorable one than being crammed into a middle-of-the-road bistro along with two dozen other couples ticking the Valentine’s boxes. (And let’s face it, if you’ve left it until now to make plans, you ain’t getting a table at the Ivy this Thursday…)
We’ve scoured the schedules of the UK’s best cookery schools and picked five classes with space for you and your other half this V-Day. The way to the heart is through the stomach, after all…
For sweethearts…
Take the day off and get thee to Devon: the engine room of the Fearnley-Whittingstall empire, River Cottage, is devoting the day to cake on Thursday, with a full-on baking masterclass covering everything from basic batter to choux pastry.
Cakes and Sweet Pastry – £195 a person (9.30am – 5pm)
For sausage lovers…
What could be romantic than getting together with your special someone and spending the evening with your hands in a bowl of mince? The Cookery School at Little Portland Street hosts a sausage special on Thursday, teaching you to make, fill and form everything from rare-breed pork bangers to spicy merguez. Plus, you get a sausage supper and beer at the end…
Sausages – £125 a person (6.30pm – 9.30pm)
For Valentine’s veggies
Up in Altrincham, it’s nibbles night at the Vegetarian Society Cookery School, with an evening class in vegan snacks and salads specially designed for meat-free twosomes. The romantically inclined evening class is strictly couples-only – and culminates in brownies…
Vegan Love Bites – £85 a couple (7pm–9.30pm)
For courting carnivores…
Meat-eaters should head to Malton Cookery School on Thursday, which is celebrating the tastiest cuts of Yorkshire livestock with butchery-focused morning class. You’ll learn how to prepare and cook different cuts of meat and poultry with confidence, and if you want to make an overnighter of it, the school is attached to the Talbot – the best hotel in town.
Best of Yorkshire Meat – £99 a person (10am – 2pm)
For romantics in a rush…
All the gourmet panache of three-course Valentine’s restaurant dinner – with the added bonus that you go home knowing how to replicate it afterwards. In just 90 minutes, the St Paul’s branch of L’Atelier des Chefs will show you how to whip up salmon tartare, spiced duck breast in plum sauce and a chocolate cheesecake with strawberry skewers. And, because it’s all wrapped up by 7.30pm, you and your love will still have the whole evening ahead of you…
90 mn-menu – Valentine’s Cooking – £58 a person (6pm–7.30pm)
Can’t make the 14th but still want to treat your partner to a cookery course? Don’t forget that National Cookery School guide gift e-cards are valid for any course at 50 UK schools…