Overview
Advanced Cooking Skills is a two-part cooking course series, that takes place full-time during the day over one week, for confident home-cooks wanting to elevate their cooking skills to new heights and produce fine-dining level dishes.
These courses are designed to cover numerous skills and techniques to boost your cooking ability in a short, concentrated period of time. By the end of the week, you’ll have gained excellent technique on a variety of advanced cooking skills and the ability to interpret and adapt recipes. Although this is not a professional, accredited course, it may also be suitable for those working in the food industry who wish to refine and modernise their advanced techniques.
Part 1 and Part 2 of Advanced Cooking Skills may be taken in succession to achieve a practiced knowledge of advanced cookery or taken individually for more focused learning.
Part 1 of Advanced Cooking Skills builds on an existing skillset, that may have been developed in Intermediate Cooking Skills, and covers advanced and fine-dining techniques such as meat, fish and shellfish prep, jus, mousseline and plated desserts.
Skills covered:
- Meat and Jus
- Shellfish
- Pasta and mousseline
- Clearing
- Plated desserts
Example recipes:
- Brined BBQ quail with pomegranate jus and sweetcorn
- Scallops with lime and radish
- Crab and prawn raviolo
- Mushroom consommé
- Gnocchi with spring vegetables and a sage beurre noisette
- Ox cheek, bone marrow, flatbread and a flat leaf parsley salad
- Turbot, cucumber beurre blanc and caviar
Sample recipes may be subject to change
Course Structure
Cooking with your classmates is an integral part of your Leiths experience. You will cook some of your recipes in pairs, and some independently. Whatever the ratio, there is always more than enough food to go around, and often food to take home too.
Each day will comprise of a mixture of practical cookery and demonstrations performed by the teacher who is running the session. The exact format will vary from class to class depending on the style of cuisine and, in the case of visiting chefs, their individual teaching style.
Around 1pm, you will break for lunch and enjoy the dishes you have cooked with the rest of your class, accompanied by a glass of wine or other refreshments. In some classes, such as skills classes, where dishes may not be appropriate for lunch, a mezze lunch will be provided.
Practicalities
What’s included:
- A Leiths apron
- Refreshments on arrival
- A recipe booklet
- All ingredients provided and weighed out for you in advance
- Lunch of your own making or sharing platters prepared by the school, served with wine or other refreshments
- We do the washing up
What to bring:
- Flat soled shoes
- Long trousers and a long-sleeved top are advisable
- A notebook and pencil
Allergies and dietary restrictions
We are happy to make adjustments where possible. However, some classes are unsuitable for people with particular intolerances as the menu would need to be completely different. We need 10 days’ notice to be able to properly check the class and adjust the order accordingly. Please read our full policy on allergies and dietary restrictions here.
