Festive Feasts at The Vegetarian Society Cookery School

Ah, Christmas, the most emotive of all the C-words. Whilst I'm not keen on shops full of Christmas tat and festive music before the start of Autumn, I'm very happy to eat Christmas food at pretty much any time of year; I'm a big fan of wintery food in general, and any occasion that encourages the consumption of sprouts, pre-lunch booze and one's own body weight in cheese gets my vote every time. As a blogger, this all-year-round love of Christmas food is useful, as festive previews tend to be over the summer, and thus it was I found myself a couple of weeks ago at The Vegetarian Society in Altrincham for a Christmas cookery school.

The weather, naturally, was beautiful, and the sunshine streaming in through the French doors meant the Christmas tree set up in the corner of our reception room looked a little forlorn. It's amazing how quickly you can get into the spirit of something though, and as soon as we were in the kitchen with our genial chef Alex, it was surprisingly easy to buy into the whole thing, particularly with the prospect of some mince pies in the offing. There were eight of us on the course, grouped around a central island worktop set with individual stations - it's a lovely kitchen, with plenty of space and several cookers, hobs and sinks so that you don't all end up queuing to wash your hands at the same time. We began with some knife skills and then were straight into the festive baking, working together to make mincemeat before rolling out our own pastry and each making four mince pies. I've always wanted to be the sort of person who makes their own mincemeat and it was really very easy (especially if you make The Lady Sybil do the elbow grease, as seen below). Alex also demonstrated a couple of dishes, but even these were very hands-on, with jobs assigned to anyone making eye contact at the wrong moment.

Over a cup of tea and one of our own mince pies (which were perfect - not too sweet and each the size of a small house), we got to look through a selection of recipes and each choose one to make. This is a great idea, and my favourite part of the whole course - every cookery school I've been to before has given everyone the same thing to make, whereas the idea here is that we each make something different and then all sit down to a real feast of dishes. This could, of course, be a little daunting for the inexperienced cook, and it did take a few minutes to get my head round where everything was (mind you, my mum has lived in her current house for 17 years, and I still can't ever find anything in her kitchen). The recipe I'd chosen - the Stilton and Walnut Cheesecake with Port and Blueberry sauce - was fairly straightforward though, and Alex was on hand to help with any questions and to laugh at me for accidentally setting my Port sauce on fire just the tiniest bit.

The afternoon flew by, and it was soon time for us to proudly carry our dishes through to the serving table and sit down for Christmas dinner. There wasn't a duff dish amongst them, although my favourites were my Stilton tart (due to the presence of a great deal of cheese rather than any skill on my part), the spectacular Chestnut and Butterbean Wellington and the astonishingly good Sumac Carrot Smash. Alex joined us for lunch along with cookery school manager Jonathan and media officer Su, and great company they were too; in fact everyone on the course was lovely, and the atmosphere was festive indeed.

The whole day was brilliant fun, and I actually learned a few things as well as confirming that my love of sprouts remains undiminished. The people at the Vegetarian Society are lovely, and not the least bit preachy to the array of (mostly) carnivores sitting in front of them; instead, they're all about showing that vegetarian food can be just as good (and sometimes better) than its meatier equivalents. I rarely cook meat at home any more, and whilst I shan't be going back to vegetarianism any time soon (last attempted when I was 16, and trying to convince Morrissey I was the girl for him with no idea I was barking up a very wrong tree indeed) I will definitely be making a number of the recipes from the pack - even the Nut Roast looks good. Maybe not until nearer December though...

- The Vegetarian Society Cookery School is at Parkdale, Dunham Rd, Altrincham WA14 4QG. The next Festive Feasts course is on Wednesday 8th November and costs £139, good value for a full-day course where the numbers are kept low. Just beware your friends and family will expect you to replicate the entire feast for them single-handedly, as mine are currently baying for.

Cookery School at Chaophraya Thai, Manchester: No More Friday Night Takeaways

If you cook quite a lot, it's easy to get stuck in a bit of a rut, and to think that you know more than you do. For example, until last weekend, I was confident in the knowledge of at least two things: that I could make a really, really good Thai curry from scratch, and that spring rolls could never, ever be worth the effort of making yourself, and should only ever be purchased from your local takeaway (preferably wearing a hastily-donned coat over the top of your pyjamas).

A few hours at a Chaophraya cooking class last Sunday proved me erroneous in both regards. First things first though: in case you've not been, Chaophraya is an excellent Thai restaurant nestled behind and above Sam's Chop House on Chapel Walks, a stalwart in an area of Manchester where there are frequent restaurant casualties. I've had a couple of really good meals here in the past, so was excited to be let loose in one of their cooking classes, which promised an introduction to Thai ingredients, as well as a demonstration and hands on session and - that magic word - tasting.

There are nine of us on the course, and we are given a welcome glass of fruit punch before being equipped with Chaophraya aprons and chef's hats (as usual, mine is too small, and I have to have help) and sent upstairs where our work stations await. This is a very well-organised (and subsequently calm) affair; some of the restaurant tables have been pushed together and set with boards and other equipment, with a stove set up at one end, and we are split into a five and a four with the luxury of one instructor each.

Our menu for the day is chicken spring rolls followed by Thai green chicken curry, with kluay buad chee - bananas in coconut milk - for pudding. They are happy to cater for dietary needs but we appear to be a bunch of omnivores, although one of our party requests not to have things too spicy. The spring rolls turn out to be brilliant fun to make - we finely chop and stir-fry a selection of vegetables and then are each given a pile of wrappers and shown how to construct the perfect spring roll (with infinite patience, it has to be said). They look mighty impressive and we are all pretty pleased with ourselves when our efforts are whisked away, deep-fried, and returned to us with a pleasingly spicy dipping sauce. We have made around 5,000 of these items and they are delicious; I manage four and watch with some satisfaction as a good half dozen more are packed for each of us to take home. Whilst I can't ever imagine knocking a batch of these up on a Friday night after a week at work, I would definitely make these again for a special occasion, and our smugness at our own cleverness is palpable.

On to the main, and I am, in truth, a little disappointed that it's something I make so frequently at home and already consider myself to be quite good at. HOWEVER. Whilst we have been eating our starter, the workstations have magically cleaned themselves and set themselves with an array of beautifully fresh, healthy ingredients, and the curry we make is, without question, in a different league from any I have ever made before. Maybe it's the freshness of the ingredients; maybe it's the addition of one or two things I tend to leave out because I can't be bothered to go out and find them (fresh lime leaves come to mind); maybe it's because we make the curry paste properly, in a pestle and mortar, rather than lazily throwing all the ingredients into a food processor like I normally do at home. Either way, the curry is amazing, and I feel I have genuinely learned something from making both these courses - about technique for the starter, and about flavours for the main. Our chefs couldn't be more helpful, talking to us about the ingredients and bringing me a little dish of bird's eye chillies and fish sauce with which to augment my curry when I mention I like things slightly spicier.

The dessert is the least exciting of the dishes but is delicious all the same - we chop bananas and simmer them in coconut milk with sugar, salt and sesame seeds. It is simple but effective, although we are all pretty stuffed by now and not everyone can finish the generous helping we are given. At the end of a most enjoyable 2.5 hours, we leave with full stomachs, garlicky fingers, and a bag containing the food that we've made, the recipes, and a bottle of beer to wash it all down with, as well as our authentically be-smeared aprons. Accusations that I then go to meet a friend for a pint at Sam's and he excitedly consumes all the spring rolls in a furtive manner under the table are almost entirely unfounded.

- I was invited to the cookery class free of charge but - genuinely - this is one of the best-value cookery classes I've tried, and I would honestly pay the £60 to go again. Full details can be found on the Chaophraya website here.

Zouk Cookery School, Manchester: Best Bhajis in Britain

When your day job is teaching, normally just the very mention of the word "school" is enough to give you palpitations and necessitate a quick lie down. Not so when preceded by the word "cookery" and located at Zouk, the much-lauded Pakistani and Indian restaurant tucked away at the top end of Studentville; indeed, so exciting was the prospect I willingly got up early on a Saturday morning and headed there in search of education, knowledge and new skills (and the prospect of a substantial luncheon).

I'd never been to Zouk before, but pretty much everyone I mentioned it to had already been and already loved it - although were surprised to learn of their regular cookery schools, so the restaurant perhaps needs to shout about this a bit more. Classes start at 10am with a welcome talk and a cup of masala chai; there are thirteen of us in all, including lots of people on their own, and everyone gets on immediately - united in our greed and enthusiasm for Indian food. The course I attended was "British Favourites", which promised to show us how to make all those anglicised dishes that everyone secretly really likes - Seekh Kebabs, Onion Bhaji, Chicken Tikka Masala, Lamb Rogan Josh and Channa Masala, along with rice and naan - but which never come out quite the same at home and which are so often garishly coloured and profoundly disappointing from one's local takeaway.

This is a refreshingly laid-back type of cookery school - we are given the recipes but told we won't need them, and we gather round a few tables in the restaurant area that have been pushed together and covered with tempting pots of herbs and spices. Much of the course is demonstration-led, but there is plenty of hands-on participation too: we are each given a metal tray filled with sliced onions and are at liberty to season at will (my bhajis are pleasingly heavy on the garlic and the coriander) before learning how much gram flour to use - this is the crucial bit - and how to combine the ingredients in such a way as to incorporate plenty of air. Our fledgling bhajis are then whisked away; next time we see them, they are sizzling away happily in the restaurant kitchen. Seconds later, most of them are in my mouth, hot from the fryer and quite simply the best bhajis that any of us has ever tasted (genuinely, and I've tasted a LOT). We also get hands-on with the chicken tikka, and whilst my tray of raw chicken might not look that appetising, its transformation once grilled on long skewers over (very) hot coals is quite something.

Much of the rest is handled by the chefs. Ali, our tutor, shows us how to make the seekh kebabs, which we enjoy along with some more bhajis and the chicken tikka over a very welcome tea break (well, Coke/beer break - soft drinks are on the house and alcohol can be purchased at the bar). Then - thrillingly - he lets us loose in the kitchen, where we run amok and, truth be told, everything gets a bit chaotic. It's fun though, with the three different main dishes on the go as well as the largest pan of rice I have ever seen. We are allowed to supervise, and stir, and taste, and ask questions, and generally make a bit of a nuisance of ourselves - the chefs are genial and tolerant, however, and I learn lots of new things, including how to make an extraordinarily good Channa Masala. The real surprise, though, is the Chicken Tikka Masala (seen below in its massive vat, which I was hoping was all for me) - a dish I normally avoid for its bland creaminess but which is quite simply a revelation in these expert hands.

Perhaps the nicest touch of all is that the budding chefs are each allowed to have a guest join them at the end of the course, to help eat all the food they have made. I had forgotten this until someone mentioned it during the morning, and it is to my friend's great credit that she responded so nobly to my late call, bravely hotfooting it across town despite a code amber hangover in order to admire our handiwork (she decreed her race against time well worth it). Each course is individually priced but the average is around £80-90 - not cheap, but this seems good value for the time and attention you receive and the generosity with the food you've helped to make. I was given a complimentary place on my course for review purposes but will definitely be booking more as a paying customer: full details can be found here on the Zouk website. In the meantime though, I now know how to make the world's best bhajis, so if anyone fancies popping round and helping me slice some onions, you'll be more than welcome.

- Zouk Tea Bar and Grill can be found at Unit 5, The Quadrangle, Chester Street, Manchester M1 5QS; tel 0161 233 1090. They won the Best Restaurant Award in the Manchester Tourism Awards in 2012 and I can see why, so it's to my great discredit that I'd never been before (an error I intend to atone for on a regular basis).