A European cooking getaway lets you escape from the same old kitchen routine
Cooking is one of life’s essential skills — and one of its greatest pleasures. So if lately you’ve been finding it a bit of a chore, you may be ready for a cooking vacation. You’ll refresh your kitchen skills and remind yourself what a joy it is to cook well and with confidence. And if you head for a European kitchen, you could find yourself rolling out pasta in a 16th-century Italian farmhouse, or roasting lamb in a townhouse in Devon, with a picturesque view from your kitchen window.
A cooking vacation has all the benefits of a country house weekend, thanks to the shared quarters, comfortable atmosphere, and communal meals. After just a few hours in the kitchen, you will be bonding over the frying pans with your fellow guests and swapping cooking (and travel) tips, helped along by a glass or two of local wine. As you stir the fresh ragù sauce or taste the tarte au citron that you made with your own hands, you’ll wonder why you don’t cook like this all the time.
Traditional Italian Cooking
Just a few years ago, the farmhouse at Fontana del Papa sat in a state of ruin. The house, located about an hour away from Rome at the top of a hill surrounded by beautiful countryside, was uninhabited and without electricity. Shutters were falling off, windows were without glass, or even frames, and the building looked like it was barely standing. Fortunately, before it fell down completely, Claudio Pierotti and Assuntina Antonacci restored the house. The couple preserved the structure’s traditional character, keeping the terra-cotta floors, vaulted ceilings, and wooden beams, and they now offer residential cooking classes in a haven that celebrates the area’s heritage.
Making fresh pasta
In this unspoiled corner of Italy, the locals work hard to preserve their way of life and still cook with the recipes their grandmothers taught them, using ingredients from local farms and villages. As Antonacci explains, “We cook what an Italian family would normally cook for lunch and dinner. Everything is seasonal, so the recipes are different in winter and summer.”
From one of the resident chefs, you will learn to make pasta, sauces, breads, and pizza as well as puddings and main courses such as ravioli with spinach and ricotta, or stuffed zucchini and eggplant. The owners grow vegetables and herbs in their garden and make their own organic olive oil, which they use freely in their recipes. Pierotti is also a professional sommelier, so the courses include a talk on wine production and Italian wines. This region, Lazio, is perhaps best known for its white wines, such as Frascati and Marino, but Pierotti will introduce you to some good local reds too. And with the talk, of course, comes tastings. Guests have plenty of options for excursions to the lovely villages surrounding Fontana del Papa. But sitting out on the farmhouse terrace overlooking the rolling hills of northern Lazio, with a glass of Cesanese del Piglio, you may not want to go anywhere else.
How to get there: Guests can be picked up at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport or rent a car.
Cost: A four-night stay costs 860 euros ($1,090) and includes transfer to/from the Rome airport, accommodations, all meals (except lunch in Rome), cooking lessons, and an excursion to the nearby town of Tarquinia.
Information: +39.0766.93455; cookitaly.it
Catalan Cooking
Many cooking holidays seem to take place in a picturesque location, but few can top Almiral de la Font. This Catalan manor house 20 miles from Barcelona was built in 1592 and sits atop a hill surrounded by the green rolling hills and mountains of Garraf National Park, with dramatic views of the Balearic Sea. The rooms in this beautiful house are spacious and elegant, with old-fashioned claw foot bathtubs and wrought iron bedsteads. Simply staying in the house would be worth a holiday; the cooking classes are a delicious bonus.
Communal meals are part of the charm of a European cooking vacation.
The four-day course introduces visitors to the basics of Catalan cuisine, including classic recipes such as sofregit, a mixture of onions, garlic, tomatoes, and olive oil, slow-cooked until caramelized, which is the base for many Catalan dishes. There are three cooking sessions and three tastings with local wine producers and vineyards, as well as local excursions, so you can explore the surrounding area. There’s also plenty of eating — the typical Catalan breakfast includes cured sausages; cheeses; country bread with olive oil, tomato and garlic; and lots of good coffee, which should keep you going nicely until lunch. The sessions include a talk on olive oil, followed by a lunch specially devised to demonstrate matching foods and olive oils with the right wine.
How to get there: Guests can be picked up at Barcelona Airport or they can rent a car.
Cost: A four-day holiday costs 1,450 euros ($1,840) per person (based on two sharing a room). That includes transfers, three cooking classes, three nights’ lodging (with breakfast and dinner), two lunches, wine and aperitifs, and excursions. Guests also receive a diploma, an apron, and a gift.
Information: 203.732.0771; activegourmetholidays.com
Dinner Party Secrets
The Belle Isle School of Cookery aims to “stir the imagination, inspire confidence, and find natural flair.” So if your cooking skills have remained hidden, this might be the place to discover them. And it would be hard to choose a more romantic location in which to do so — Belle Isle Estate is on an island amid the woodland and lakes of Ireland’s County Fermanagh. Chef-in-residence Liz Moore has cooked for all kinds of dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth, and provides enjoyable, practical lessons to give guests more confidence in their cooking.
The school offers themed courses of various lengths, including a Dinner Party course that can be completed over three days. Designed to take the stress out of hosting, the lessons teach you how to prepare ahead, so you don’t spend all your party time in the kitchen. “For example,” says Moore, “a quail salad can be partly cooked and the vermouth sauce made ahead, so it just needs to be assembled as the guests arrive. And the [dessert] could be a terrine or something fruity that’s made the night before.”
Clockwise from top left: Claudio Pierotti, Assuntina Antonacci, and their family make staying at Fontana del Papa a warm experience, and so do the guest rooms; a rustic sign at Fontana del Papa
Moore describes the recipes as modern Irish mixed with European, with preparations like soda bread with goat cheese, herbs, or sun-dried tomatoes that give traditional recipes a twist. You can stay either in one of the four-star apartments (with kitchen) in the school’s courtyard or in one of the cottages on the estate, which are a 10-minute walk from the school. Guests taking the longer courses can even stay in the local castle, when there’s room.
When you’re not in the kitchen, there is plenty to do — tennis courts, boats, a croquet lawn, walking, fishing, and sport shooting are among the on-site activities, and nearby options include golf, horseback riding, and lots of cultural excursions to historic sites. The school overlooks Lough Erne and the Florence Court mountains, so you will be tempted to head outside — this is a place to escape to as well as a place to learn.
How to get there: Belle Isle is 82 miles from Belfast and 105 miles from Dublin; rental cars are available at the airports in both cities.
Cost: A three-day course costs £350 ($664), including full board and accommodations. Noncooking partners can stay at a reduced rate.
Information: +44.28.6638.7231; irishcookeryschool.com
Gastro Plus in Devon
The Ashburton Cookery School sits in a quintessentially English town, filled with Georgian houses, on the edge of Dartmoor, in southwestern England. The school, which offers professional diploma courses as well as vacation packages, has been named one of the best cooking courses in the world by several prestigious food magazines.
“We are very committed to the quality of our teaching,” confirms the managing director, Stella West-Harling. “We pass on good culinary skills to everyone who attends, whether they are cooking for themselves or hoping to turn professional.”
The two-day Gastro! Plus course teaches “the art and practice of choosing, preparing, and eating good food.” You will learn how to choose ingredients — seasonal, locally sourced, and organic — and how to store, handle, and prepare them. The recipes include such staples as stock, bread, a pastry dish, a custard sauce, and a butter- or cream-based sauce, so that by the end of the course you will have learned the key skills and basic recipes that form the basis for many other dishes. West-Harling describes the food as “modern British,” so your menu might include Somerset brie and red onion tartlet, or an apricot, honey, and rosemary mousse. The accommodations are in Hare’s Lane Cottage, where the cooking school is housed. Parts of the cottage date back to the 12th century, and the most recent additions were made in 1701. The course is a brief one, but you get a good grounding in a short time and will emerge with some cast-iron cooking skills.
How to get there: Ashburton is 96 miles from Bristol and can be reached by rental car or by train, via the Newton Abbot station. From London it is 190 miles (about 2½ hours by train). The school is a 15-minute taxi ride from Newton Abbot station.
Cost: The two-day Gastro! Plus course costs £225 ($427), including lunch and dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. Bed-and-breakfast accommodations at Hare’s Lane Cottage cost £49 ($93) for a single room or £65 ($123) for a double. Noncooking partners are welcome but cannot join the cooking guests for lunch or dinner.
Information: +44.1364.652784; ashburtoncookeryschool.co.uk
Cooking for Fun
You might not typically associate easygoing, friendly cooking with French cuisine. But Cook in France, which offers cooking holidays in the Dordogne — a small area in the southwest quarter of France famous for its foie gras and truffles — delivers just that. Run by an English couple, Jim and Lucy Fisher, Cook in France provides a relaxed setting where the emphasis is on having fun as well as learning to cook. Situated in a converted stone barn, the school has a large, airy, modern kitchen, comfortable rooms, and a swimming pool, as well as seven acres of fields, woodland, and orchards in which guests can stroll and relax. Courses last one, two, three, or five days.
Once in the kitchen, you’ll be immersed in the Fishers’ ethos: “to dismantle haute cuisine and repackage it in a more user-friendly form.” The couple believes that simple food is the best — no fancy sauces or complicated recipes — and they use fresh, seasonal ingredients. Guests pick up useful skills such as how to prepare various cuts of meat, how to prepare shellfish, and how to make ice cream and sorbets.
Leslie, a young guest at Fontana del Papa, brings in vegetables.
You can also improve your knife skills, demystify some culinary terms, and learn how to rescue food that’s gone wrong — an extremely useful skill. The course is tailored to suit the guests as much as possible, so you will be asked before arriving what your greatest wish might be — to learn to bone a chicken or how to make crème brûlée — and they will do their best to fit it in.
“We had one gentleman who was sent here as a 60th birthday present from his wife,” says Lucy, “and he really wanted to learn to make a raspberry soufflé. So that’s what we did. He was thrilled!”
How to get there: From Paris, take a train to Limoges (about 3 hours). From there you can hire a car to drive the short distance to Bombel, or you can be picked up at the station for 75 euros ($95) per person or per couple.
Cost: The 175-euros-per-day cost ($222) includes all cooking classes, lunch, and refreshments. B&B accommodations are 53 euros ($67) per person per night. Dinner is not included but can be provided for an additional charge, or you can eat out locally. The different options enable guests to build the holiday exactly to their needs and not be tied down to an all-in package if it doesn’t suit.
Information: +33.553.302.405; cookinfrance.com
— Jo Swinnerton
Getting There: All the destinations covered in this story can be reached by flying Continental Airlines. To book your vacation to these and other destinations, visit Continental Airlines Vacations at covacations.com.
