Private Cookery Courses

“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: £150
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.

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: £150 per person
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

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. He has had a relationship with Rayburn for over 40 years. (See link to article). We are great believers in championing these superb cookers.

The heart of a home is most likely the kitchen, and these Ranges need a lot of love and attention. You have either taken the leap and bought an Esse, Aga or Rayburn because you love this type of cooker, perhaps you have grown up with them, or you have inherited one with your new home. We are here to help you maximise the use of your stove. We like to think that we have the skills to give you confidence to use these cookers properly.

From roasting meat, baking fish, tarts, pies and cakes in the ovens, to cooking welsh cakes, eggs, toasting sandwiches, and crepes on the top, we give you the lowdown on how to make that cooker sing for its supper.

Our courses are designed to help you get the most out of your range cooker by transferring 70 percent of your cooking to the ovens. Usually we use the top 70 percent and the ovens 30 percent. We show you techniques to switch that so that you do not lose too much heat through constantly cooking on the tops.

Once you know how to use them, and you have bought yourself several timers as you cannot smell anything that is cooking in one of these, you are half way there to making wonderful food and enjoying the beautiful surround heat that these ovens are built with.

If you have an expensive piece if kit, our philosophy is that you better make the most out of it. Guess what, even if you have had one of these for years, we are sure we can always teach you something new.

Lunch included
Price: £150
Course limited to 4 people

***  We also have FREE demonstrations running on our live cookers throughout the week when we are not running cookery school. If you are interested in buying an Esse, Aga or Rayburn, please do contact us if you would like to come and see us for a brief chat. Call our showroom on 01458251476 or Miranda on 07899665635. ***

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

Most of our game is sadly exported to Asia and China. Why on earth are we not cooking and eating these seasonal wonders. A lean meat, healthy, has lived a good life in the great outdoors, we are fools to not eat more pheasant, partridge, pigeon, rabbit, venison, wild duck or grouse.

When beautiful posts from the Exmoor Game Co. started appearing on Instagram, we wanted to collaborate. Jack is based in Wellington and brings sustainable game meat to the table. This course is designed to show you the wonders of what nature gifts us, that hasn’t been grow in a shed, pumped full of steroids, overfed grain, fattened up on processed foods in time periods that are unreal in nature.

We will start by talking about Somerset and the wonderful game that we have running around the hills and moors. The history of game and shooting. The seasons, the sustainability and the health benefits of these wonderfully lean feathered and four-legged friends.

You will find out the exact origin or the hill that the game we are working with has grazed on for its entire life. You will learn how to pluck a pheasant and not just cut out the breasts which is so wasteful. We will debone a gamebird and we will roast the bones and make stock. With the stock we will make a spiced pumpkin and pheasant stock velouté. This is great little shoot snack with homemade scotch eggs and tomato chilli jam. We will talk about the best ways to cook lean meat, like the poaching method. Slow cooking things like rabbit and venison and if you are lucky Jack might make an appearance to talk about his passion for game and keeping it in the UK.

We will make a raised game pie with a hot water crust. This is a delicious show-stopping centrepiece to wow even the best cooks at your table. We will braise pheasants with endives. You will learn how to season string meat like venison by making Chinese style venison burgers with juniper, star anise and herbs. We will bake some home-made brioche buns and make a homemade seasonal slaw. If we manage to get our hands on some rabbit we will make a ragu, slow cooked in the Rayburn or Esse ELX 990. We can make some fresh pasta to go with this or we can stuff some empanadas (mini Argentine pasties). Depending on what game we can get hold of for this specialist course, means that we will tailor each course to the meat that comes in fresh off the shoot. If you shoot your own game, you can bring that along too.

Lunch included
Price: £150
Course limited to 4 people
Group Offers available
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

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.

When Carol and Miranda met as pastry chefs, Carol was the only chef in the kitchen that could pull off a tart that tasted as good as the tarts she remembered eating for her mother’s book.

Carol is the best pastry maker in town. She makes pastry making look easy and our guests go home realising that it is a simple as it looks. We teach our guests how to make a simple short crust to start. Then we move to the sweet pastry or Pate Sucree which is a little harder to work with. Then we dig deep and push our guests to brave a sandy pastry or pate sucree which is harder to work with but the best pastry of the lot and Miranda’s all-time favourite.

We also teach Dan Lepard’s rough spelt puff pastry which makes the most scrumptious sausage or spiced vegetable rolls. This is Carol’s most recent revelation. We are always challenging ourselves to make new things too.

Then we move on to a hot crust pastry and use up the rest of our piggy or veggie filling in a pie. You will of course get to enjoy these delights for lunch.

Our tart fillings are seasonal and range from smoked haddock and watercress, to a leek flamiche, wild mushroom and red onion or a sweetcorn and spring onion tart, to name a few. The puff pastry is a delight in the summer when making the Goat’s Camembert, Tomato and Herb tart. It also makes delicious individual tomato, herb and prosciutto tarts.

We teach you how to make a frangipani filling with the sweet pastry and a Tarte Aux Citron with the sandy pastry. If we are mid-summer you might make a Tarte Aux Fraises with crème pâtissier, or Simon Hopkinson’s Chocolate tart, which is just off the charts. Whatever tarts you get to make, it is a fun-packed, hand-on day with a rolling pin and pinny and we think it’s a rather fabulous course.

Lunch included
Price: £150
Course limited to 4 people
Group Offers available
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

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: £150
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.

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: £150
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

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.

She and her flat mate Alex at Bristol University used to grind all their own spices in a coffee grinder (which she still has,) they conjured up some dang fine spice mixes and hosted some serious curry nights. Every pot and pan was used, rice was flung far and wide and the smell of curry lingered for days, but that was the beauty of it. Hosting their first ever dinner parties and actually impressing the guests made them keen to cook more. These curry nights have long since continued to be the highlight of their yearly social calendar as life and work took them to Somerset and London, with each year the spice blends have become more adventurous. Alex has since travelled to India and Sri Lanka and has put up a serious fight in a bid to win the curry champion title. Miranda has fought back inch and nail and this course is testament to some serious curries that they have developed over the past 20 years.

Why are we telling you this tale? Because we believe that cooking is a journey of a lifetime and not just one course.

We hope to impart our passion and our second and third hand knowledge of the art of blending the spices and flavours of India and we hope that you take away some gems and cook. We also hope that you might come back to learn more. We can carry you on this wonderful journey teaching you ever more complex spice mixes and curries from around the world.

To start you off we will make a Lamb Rogan Josh, and a Chicken Mughlai. If you are pescatarian we can use Monk Fish which is wonderful in curry.

If you are vegetarian, we will make some incredible spiced potato patties and some Shallot curry (Ulli Theeyal) and a Bindi Masala.

We will make some onion pakora and a fresh mango and mint salsa. Our vegetable dishes will include a delicious green chilli and coriander dahl, spiced crispy Indian Okra, raita, fresh mango chutney, sag paneer and cooking Indian Paneer cheese, a scented rice and more. We will of course make Peshwari naan by hand. This will leave you with the most amazing dinner party repertoire that will knock anyone’s socks off if you are trying to impress. Left over curry is also something that never goes to waste.

Start time: 10am

Finish time: 3pm

Course time: 4 – 5 hours

Lunch included

Price: £150

Course limited to 4 people

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.

The artisan bread making course stemmed from Miranda’s newly found passion for bread. She has been an apprentice baker at Panary in Dorset since 2014.

Having trained as a baker on a woodfired oven, in a proper traditional bakery on a Mill in Shaftesbury, Miranda felt compelled to introduce this bestselling course. It is designed to ignite the flames of curiosity in the fledgling baker.

For beginners who have never even deigned to make a loaf of bread, to home bakers who would like to hone their skills and perhaps take them to the next level. You will really understand different flours, learn some fascinating folding techniques and enjoy the art of hands on bread making from start to finish.

Using only the best flours from Cann Mills in Shaftesbury, Dorset, Shipton Mill flour in Tetbury, Gloucestershire and Doves Farm Flour you will mix up a couple of batches of white loaves, seeded, wholemeal.

You will try your hand at some funky folding techniques and make pitta breads, pretzels or bagels for your lunch. You get to make rolls or baguettes and you will learn the traditional art of folding and baking a proper focaccia (Italian hearth bread.)

There are a couple of surprise breads thrown in along the way, depending on what flour Miranda has got her hands on.

This is run like a day at the bakery, so you get to experience a traditional craft and how everything rises and proves and bakes throughout the day.

This is our best-selling course. It has wonderful reviews and every guest has gone home and baked some fabulous bread. Yes, Miranda does set you all homework and expects to be tagged in your bread adventures for life.

Lunch included
Price: £150
Course limited to 4 people

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

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: £150
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.

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: £150
Course limited to 4 people
Enquire with Miranda on 07899665635. Dates must be agreed and booked in advance.