Private Cookery Courses

Carol and I decided it was high time we stepped out of the hot kitchen and into the fire. We want to impart our extensive knowledge to avid bakers and foodies on the other side of the pantry doors.

“We love to expand our own knowledge of food and improve our cooking techniques. We are forever seeking out the next cookery school or experience we can go on. We always say that if we come away with a gem or two, we have had a successful day in the kitchen. We came to realise that we have all the skills and more to build our own successful cookery school. We hope that you join us on our journey and enjoy what we have to offer. We think it’s rather wonderful.

Since September 2019, we have hosted a series of successful Airbnb cookery experiences for over a year, and from this, the idea of the Kitchen Garden Cookery School was born.

Using live Esse Range Cookers at Sandpits Heating Centre, in Curry Rivel, on the Somerset Levels, the guests are welcomed into the heart of Miranda’s husband’s family-owned business that has been supplying and fitting wood-burning stoves, Aga, Rayburn & Rayburn Electric, and Esse Range Cookers for more than 50 years.

Our private classes take place around a large farmhouse kitchen table, surrounded by beautiful wood-burning stoves. You can choose to have one to one tuition or get a group of family and friends together for your own private class.

The courses range from bread baking and jam making, pasta and pastry making, vegetarian food, picnic food, healthy eating courses. The courses are often bespoke. Popular classes include how to make the perfect cakes and scones, grinding spices from scratch to make wonderful curries and homemade Peshwari naan, stylish and original canapé ideas for people who love to host, special Christmas hamper ideas, healthy eating and cooking on a diet, and much more.

Art of the Tart Course

This tart course is a celebration of Tamasin Day-Lewis’ book The Art of the Tart. Miranda grew up as chief taster and baker while this book was being written by her mother The Queen of tarts. From this book forth, Miranda (obviously the knave) developed a fascination with and passion for making tarts.

One must have delicious bread upon which to slather great jam.

This bread and jam course is an excellent way to learn some serious skills for life. Making bread yourself at home can only be a good thing and learning how to use up leftover fruit and vegetables in jams and chutneys in a time when being conscious about food waste is an important topic.

Carol and Miranda joined forces at the start of blackberry foraging season and conjured up this course while stripping the hedgerows of their purple gems. Out of the bread and jam course, the cookery school idea blossomed.

This course is fabulous. You get the artisan bread making side, and you get the low down on how to make a myriad of jams, jellies, chutneys and preserves using an abundance of vegetables from the allotment. If you don’t have green fingers, and don’t grow vegetables, it’s still a great course to learn how to use up old vegetables in the fridge and how to make jam out of punnets of fruits that have seen better days.

Carol and Miranda have also designed a few delicious signature bakes and tarts which they throw into this course for good measure. You will learn how to use up your finger-licking good jam in Miranda’s mama’s Bakewell tart or you will make some apple and pecan scones that were a happy accident in the kitchen one day when a Bramley apple and lemon curd needed spreading on something cake-like. It is an extremely interesting and hands on day out with a delicious soup or tart made with seasonal, locally grown or foraged vegetables thrown in for lunch.

Lunch included
Price: £200 per person
Course limited to 4 people
Group offers available

This is a private cookery course. If you would like more information or to book, please click here to email us or ring Miranda on 07899 665635.

Artisan Bread & Jam Making Course

This bread and jam course is an excellent way to learn some serious skills for life. Making bread yourself at home can only be a good thing and learning how to use up leftover fruit and vegetables in jams and chutneys in a time when being conscious about food waste is an important topic.

Artisan Bread Making Course

Bread making is a journey and happy accidents along the way bring a sense of desire to improve in the hope one might, just one day, make the perfect loaf.

Vegetarian food is something that we are both passionate about. We cook it at home for our families and have always loved teaching and talking about healthy eating and healthy cooking. Raised on vegetables from her father’s three allotments, Carol can cook just about any vegetable she is handed over the garden fence. Miranda was raised on vegetables, grains and pulses and designed the vegetarian and vegan menus in the kitchen she set up across the road at The Firehouse Somerset.

On this course we teach how to peal, chop, cook and season some delicious vegetarian dishes packed full of flavour. Depending on the season, what we have foraged and what we have collected from our kitchen gardens, we vary the recipes. We love teaching some herb dressings that pack a punch on a warm lentil salad. A rich tomato sauce to go with some seriously good spiced squash, butter bean and leek patties. We have some original beetroot recipes up our sleeve. We make little vegetable parcels made with vegan pastry, vegetable rolls using a rough spelt puff to die for and more. If you want to learn how to make fresh pasta with some incredible vegetable fillings and a sage brown butter, or if you want to make some new soups and vegetarian tarts to add to your repertoire, you name it, we teach you how to make, it. Vegetables are our thing. We are The Kitchen Garden after all.

Some things we have made in our Kitchen Garden Kitchen recently:

Sweet corn Fritters

Onion Pakora

Spiced Prince squash, leek, cheddar and butterbean patties

Whole beetroot stuffed with somerset goats curd and lemon ricotta cream

Tomato and Goats Camembert tart

Balsamic Onion and Feta Babka

Vegan Leek Babka

Prince Squash and sweetcorn soup

Spanakopita with a garlic and watercress salad

Spice pea, cauliflower, squash, leek and lentil dahl pockets made with rough spelt puff

Vegetable curries galore and more … come on our course and be inspired.

Lunch included
Price: £200 per person
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

Discovering Vegetables – A Vegetarian Cookery Course

On this course we teach how to peal, chop, cook and season some delicious vegetarian dishes packed full of flavour. Depending on the season, what we have foraged and what we have collected from our kitchen gardens, we vary the recipes.

“Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy, though shall hev a fishy when the boat comes in.”

“When the boat comes” in reminds us that fish caught at sea has its’ risks. The hardships that fishermen endure to bring in fresh catch has been brought to light more recently with the loss of Adam Harper when his boat that had recently been a victim of the Scallop wars was found capsized off the coast of Sussex.

Fish caught sustainably should be championed. It is a livelihood to many and it is an amazing alternative to meat. Everything in moderation is our motto here at the Kitchen Garden Cookery School.

Miranda used to dislike eating fish with a passion until her curiosity got the better of her and she took a job at Phil Bowditch Fish Shop in Taunton to train to be a fishmonger. The savings were of course to help her escape the delights of her hometown Taunton, to escape to Latin America. After months and months of cleaning and gutting and filleting fish, her taste buds began to realise that it wasn’t so bad after all. Sword fish is a great place to start. Chunky, white fish, with a parsley sauce over the top, prawns in a garlic butter, shallow fried squid. Her phobia was gone. Having travelled the world, learning how to cook fish on a campfire on the beach in Peru at the start of the Inca trail to Cuzco, she was hooked line and sinker. You can to this day still see the steps up from the beach and the path that young men used to use to run the fish from the beach to the king in Cuzco over 240 miles away. A move to Barcelona grew Miranda’s passion for squid, cuttlefish, scallops and sushi, and on her return she went and worked with a fish chef who was pulled off the crabbing boats in Cornwall in the 70s by Rick Stein and trained to cook in his first restaurant, The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow.

On this course you will lose any preconceptions that fish is expensive, or hard to cook. You will learn how to fillet two different types of fish. We will make a fish curry, some little Thai fish cakes and a chilli dipping sauce. If you want to make sushi, we can do that. If you are more interested in the traditional methods of cooking fish then you will make a fish stock, a beurre blanc or noisette which goes extremely well with Skate or ray. You will make a great local ale beer batter for Friday Night Fish and Chip Night and learn how to cook fish en Papilotte which we will then use to make either fish cakes or a fish pie. If you already know the basics never fear, we will tailor a course to show you a few more ‘Fishy Dishy’s’ that you can enjoy cooking for your friends and family.

Price: £200
Course limited to 4 people
Group Offers available

NB: If you would like a more gourmet and technical course that includes Searing scallops, shucking Porlock Bay Oysters, cleaning and cooking huge prawns, making a couple of seriously decent sauces and more, the course price will be bespoke. Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635.

Fish Dishes – Filleting and Cooking Sustainable Fish

On this course you will lose any preconceptions that fish is expensive, or hard to cook. You will learn how to fillet two different types of fish. We will make a fish curry, some little Thai fish cakes and a chilli dipping sauce.

If you haven’t got forearms like an Italian mama or flour all over your face and in hair by the end of this day in our kitchen, you either haven’t enjoyed yourself or been worked hard enough.

What would a cookery school be without a proper pasta making and pizza baking course?

It’s simply fun to make either of these Italian wonders with friends or family. My children love rolling out the pasta and winding the handle on the pasta making machine to make tagliatelle. They make pizzas with their friends and these are just two dishes that make a happy kitchen table. These are skills for life and guess what. They are wonderfully fun to teach and easy to learn.

Having been on enough pasta making and woodfired pizza baking courses, we think we have devised a rather better one than Course than our more expensive competition has to offer.

Why is ours better one might ask? Well, the dough we make is the same beautiful dough that Miranda introduced to the family-run Firehouse Somerset opposite. The pizzas renowned across Somerset. The dough is a proper Neapolitan dough, made three days before it is rolled and broken. And, the toppings are sourced by the best Italian supplier from wonderful producers across Italy.

How can you make the dough three days before this course one might ask?

Well you don’t. You use our dough that is 3 days old and we use you as slave labour to make the next dough… but it’s worth it. You will see.

You don’t just make pizza dough. You will also make a traditional focaccia bread. You will learn the history of focaccia, how to knead, fold, roll and stuff the bread too with some delicious Italian ingredients.

We will talk about ingredients, including best flours to use for pizza, pasta and focaccia. You will learn a little about mozzarella, and taste some of our locally made Mozarella Di Buffula. You will make two seasonal, fresh Italian sauces to go with your pasta. You will also make tortelloni or ravioli with a lovely filling and a crispy sage and brown butter sauce to finish.

You will learn to roll, and fold pizza dough. The hydration techniques and flour strengths to get the best looking pizza in town. You will learn to break a pizza dough and we will have various toppings to try from our wonderful Italian supplier in Clevedon. You will get to go and visit our beautiful woodfired oven and watch our pizza boys in action across the road. You will enjoy your pizzas for lunch and take your pasta and sauces home for supper.

Mama mia what a day out we have in store for you.

Lunch included
Price: £200 per person
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

Fresh Pasta and Artisan Neapolitan Pizza

What would a cookery school be without a proper pasta making and pizza baking course? If you haven’t got forearms like an Italian mama or flour all over your face and in hair by the end of this day in our kitchen, you either haven’t enjoyed yourself or been worked hard enough.

Indian & Middle Eastern Cookery Course

Miranda’s passion for curry has its’ roots in her first cookery book she wrote at the age of 18. Cheap as Chips Better than Toast was one of the first student cookbooks to adorn the shelves in Waterstones and the virtual shelves of Amazon and had a bunch of easy curry recipes to encourage her peers to cook some simple cheap curries for their flatmates.

Mastering the Art of the Esse, Aga or Rayburn Range Cooker

This is a must-have course seeing as we teach centre stage at Sandpits Heating Centre in a showroom filled with Esse and Rayburn Range Cookers. This is a family-run business that was started by Miranda’s father in-law Bob Macey more than 50 years ago.

Tell us what cakes you dream of eating, and we teach you how to make those dreams come true.

Carol and Miranda hold a passion for baking the perfect cakes. Carol was the head baker at some wonderful cafes across Somerset, and Miranda has always loved an excellent crumb.

Cake making is no doubt an art. It is all about weighing, whisking, beating and finding the perfect marriage of textures and flavours. We make sure that you learn the 4 different cake mixing techniques including melting method for batters, rubbing in for buns, whisking and folding with egg white for flourless cakes and the creaming method for sponges. We make fillings including a blackcurrant and blueberry jam and passionfruit curd. Two of our favourite showstoppers on this course. We show you how to match filling with cake. How to layer cakes and simple piping methods.

If you wish to brush up on specific skills and techniques, or learn something new, we love a challenge. We have had guests wanting to make simple rock buns, scones and cookies. Other guests prefer to put us through our paces and want to learn the more technical bakes like profiteroles, cinnamon buns, brioche, tiered cakes and more.

We enjoy teaching novice bakers and we thrive off finding new recipes and techniques to wow the most skilled home bakers. It is always a fun-filled, hands on day out. Baking gets extremely competitive as we all know after years of watching the Great British Bake Off. You name it we teach you how to bake it.

Be it a fun family cake-off, with chocolate cake making competitions, or a fancy biscuits and pastries day in the kitchen, we like to offer originality, and recipes that work.

We can teach you how to make your very own signature cream tea to wow your guests at home.

We have a brilliant repertoire of Gluten Free cakes if you want a day out practicing with GF flour.

Lunch included
Price: £200 per person
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

Perfect Cakes & Bakes

Taming The Game Bird – Game Cooking And More

Bringing game meat from field to fork, we aim to give game a name again.

The Mad Hatters Tea Party might be famous in literature, but Carol’s high teas are famed across Somerset.

You will have a mad day out making some magically wonderful and scrumptiously delectable treats to showcase the British tradition of afternoon tea. Carol was most recently the Head baker at Hestercombe Gardens in Somerset for three years. Before that she designed and made all the puddings at The Firehouse Somerset with Miranda. According to our guests these puddings were unbelievable. So, we do have some kudos when it comes to making an excellent dessert or four. We have put all our knowledge and skill together to bring this Afternoon Tea Course to fruition and we are very proud of the results.

Did you know that there is a difference between and Afternoon Tea and High Tea?

The British tradition of afternoon tea was introduced by Anna, the Duchess of Bedford, became fashionable in the 19th Century and was the preserve of the rich. You can thank this duchess for the excuse to sit down for an afternoon treat of tea, sandwiches, scones and cake. Never the intention to stuff oneself silly, so one couldn’t move, this was just to fill the long gap between lunch and dinner at a time when dinner was served at around 8pm.

Workers in newly industrialized Britain, had to wait until they had finished work to enjoy teatime. Tea was served later and consisted of much heartier dishes rather than tea and cake. The after-work meal was usually hot and filling, and to revive flagging spirits was accompanied with a pot of strong tea. This tea was served at the table and workers were seated on high back dining chairs. It is believed that the word ‘high’ distinguishes the two types of tea, as afternoon tea is traditionally served to those relaxing in the garden or on low comfortable chairs in the parlour.

Surrounded by stoves that originated in the 19th century such as the Esse Ironheart, we will teach you how to bake a traditional afternoon tea. Using some original recipes and a few with a more modern twist, we aim to recreate a slice of history which we hope would gain the approval at court of the Duchess of Bedford or perhaps even Marie Antoinette.

You will bake your own traditional Artisan loaf to make finger sandwiches with two types of filling. You will learn how to make blackberry and apple fancies and lemon and vanilla Magdalenes. We will make a traditional tea loaf or fruit cake, some of our signature scones and jam from our Bread and Jam Course. There will always be a little chocolate something to feast on too. So, get the girls (and guys if they like a bake off) together, find a reason to have a day out and book on to this course. You will have a wonderful afternoon tea to enjoy around our farmhouse table after a good day’s baking.

Lunch included
Price: £200 per person
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

Tea For Two And Two For Tea

You will have a mad day out making some magically wonderful and scrumptiously delectable treats to showcase the British tradition of afternoon tea. Carol was most recently the Head baker at Hestercombe Gardens in Somerset for three years.