What's Cooking In Wales?

09-23-2010

 Welsh Cookery Schools Whet the Appetite

 

New York, NY - September 21, 2010 - Welsh cookery schools are sprouting up as food aficionados flock to Wales to learn the art of cooking and to experience terroir.  Borrowed from French winemakers, who used the term to describe the special effects of growing conditions in a specific location on the taste and qualities of regional wine, terroir, from the French terre for land, has come to be used when speaking about food sourced and prepared locally.

 

Two newcomers to the Welsh cooking school scene that are committed to the concept of terroir are the eponymous Cooking with Angela Gray and the Chef's Room, Fish & Cookery School founded by Michelin-star chef Franco Taruschio and Lindy Wildsmith, food writer and cooking instructor.

 

Cooking with Angela Gray provides the quintessential Welsh culinary travel adventure. Food writer, broadcaster, consultant and former chef to the rich and famous, Angela Gray chose three locations right out of central casting in which to offer her cooking classes: Slebech Park, a gorgeous Georgian mansion house in the heart of the Pembrokeshire National Park; the 13th-century Fonmon Castle, outside of Cardiff, where participants harvest herbs from a medicinal and culinary walled garden and Ffin y Park country house and art gallery in Llanrwst in Snowdonia National Park. “They are historic buildings, sited in outstanding food producing areas making each course a never-to-be-forgotten gastronomic experience,” says Gray, who is at the forefront of the Welsh modern food scene. www.angelagray.co.uk

 

The Chef's Room, Fish & Cookery School, founded by Michelin-star chef Franco Taruschio and food writer and cooking instructor Lindy Wildsmith, is a full-out cooking school housed in the test kitchens of Vin Sullivan, purveyor of gourmet food to restaurants and caterers in Britain and Europe. Guest chefs, including Giuseppe Silvestri from Harrods, Welsh Chef and cookbook author Nerys Howell and Michelin-star chef Shaun Hill of The Walnut Tree join Wildsmith and Taruschio to offer one-of-a-kind classes.   Travelers can learn Welsh-Italian fusion cuisine - dishes such as crescente with tomatoes; Glamorgan sausages (meatless and made of delicious Welsh Caerphilly cheese and fresh herbs encased in homemade breadcrumbs), laverbread cockle fritter, tagliatelli with squash and walnut sauce and gratin of oyster with laverbread. (Laver is a form of edible seaweed.) www.thechefsroom.co.uk.

 

Wales’ organic farming  tradition goes back a good long way – to local farmers who could not afford to buy commercial fertilizer and passed their natural farming methods on down through generations.  As a result, present day travelers can benefit and enjoy a true taste of Wales.

 

Foodies can forage for the ingredients of their home-cooked meal and then slip, contented and sated, into a comfortable bed at The Foxhunter, near Abergavenny, www.thefoxhunter.com

 

They can savor ice cream, homemade from the palest of gorse flowers plucked by hand with tweezers from local gorse bushes - a unique treat at Cookery School Prydwen Parry at Cleifiog Uchaf on Anglesey www.cleifioguchaf.com.

 

Other noteworthy Welsh cookery schools worth checking out are Drovers Rest, Llanwrtyd Wells www.food-food-food.co.uk and Culinary Cottage, Abergavenny, www.theculinarycottage.co.uk.

 

For information about the varied experiences to be had on a vacation in Wales, please visit www.usa.visitwales.com  or www.visitwales.ca.

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