What the Press Say

Why not combine a trip to the Lake District with learning to improve your cooking.

Lucy Nicholson is the Cumbrian culinary queen running an excellent restaurant in Ambleside called Lucy's on a Plate (alongside a funky bar called Lucy4 and a brilliant deli called just Lucy's). In August she opened her new venture, LucyCooks, based in an old bobbin mill in Staveley, a few miles from Ambleside. Downstairs an Aga has been fitted to offer courses in cooking at home on the range, as it were. Upstairs a huge room with impressive extraction equipment is filled with cookers, both gas and electric.

"We can cater for up to 26 at a time," said Lucy, who hails from the Midlands but settled in Cumbria 20 years ago after coming for a day and meeting her future husband.

"Everybody can cook, but not everybody will cook," she said. "You see people come in here laden with guilt that they have given a whole day to themselves and after about an hour you can see all that guilt disappear as they suddenly really enjoy the whole pleasure of rekindling the whole ethos of cooking."

The courses are for children as young as eight and cover all aspects of cooking. When I was there the demonstration being prepared was Food for Free - making the most of everything scavenged from the countryside from blackberries to mushrooms.

A sample of courses in the new year are puddings galore, soups, stocks and sauces, butchery and knife skills, gluten-free cookery (a speciality at Lucy's) and meat to make your mouth water.

Courses range from £30 for a demonstration and refreshments to £130 for a full day - but of course you do get to keep the food!

"I have tried so hard to get away from these terrible memories of domestic science classes at school," said Lucy, "I want this to be fun. If you cook for someone it is the greatest thing. That you have taken the time and trouble to make someone something. What we say here is that we are aiming to put the 'Oo' back into food and it really got off to a tremendous start."

Having sampled her cooking at Lucy's on a Plate (a three course meal in the evening for two about £40, with the puddings really a speciality), I'll bet that anyone doing her cookery course will declare that they just love Lucy.

Mark Leslie

30/12/06