On Monday, I had the privilege of spending the day at River Cottage HQ - or Park Farm - as it's known to us locals.  Park Farm is beautifully situated in the valley on the opposite side of the hill that I'm looking at from the window as I write this, so we are indeed one of the nearest B&Bs to them!  The view from the car park is similar to ours - stunning!

I was invited to attend the first day of their Four Days at Park Farm : River Cottage Cookery School.  Having had so many B&B guests attend the course, I was intrigued to see what it was like.  The course is designed to take you through the basics of cookery and a bit more, providing skills that will equip you competently to cook meat, fish, vegetables and make bread and pastry with confidence.

Although I cook on a daily basis, I still learned a huge amount and came away with hints and tips that I would never have found in a book.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and felt very at home with the ethos of the cookery school - nothing is wasted!  Even the vegetable peelings were kept and later used in stocks and soups  I heartily commend this way of life in a world where we discard so much food because a supermarket has deemed it will be rotten after two days on the shelf.  Best before dates have done so much damage and are teaching society to be wasteful.

River Cottage is fortunate to have two excellent chefs in Gill and Neil (who used to work in the Michelin starred Waterside Inn at Bray under one of the Roux dynasty - Michel I think) and they imparted their knowledge and skills with patience and zeal. 

I was quite at home with the subject matter - meat - and was pleased to see that as Gill taught us to make bacon, he used Saddleback pigs (same as us) and cured it in just salt, sugar, juniper berries, bay and peppercorns (same as us ). Some of the course attendees were less at home as Gill showed us "the pluck", in other words, the heart, lungs and liver of an animal (in this case lamb) and prepared to separate the liver that we were going to eat as our starter for lunch.  No worries for me.  I normally do that an hour after the animal has died and it's always still warm!! (Liver has to be as fresh as possible to freeze well).

We were free to wander around during the breaks and I made the most of that despite the pouring rain! There was filming going on and I made a good effort to try to get my face (and my Spillers Farm t-shirt) on camera, but alas, I think they packed up because it was too wet.  I had a good nose around the gardens though and found a lot of things that are pretty similar to here - fruit gardens full of rhubarb, gooseberries, raspberry canes (and a few weeds - glad it's not just us!)  I was also very impressed with the herb gardens which are full of a huge variety of herbs, which are well-used in the cooking I was pleased to see.

Meanwhile, I tried out some of my new learning last night, marinating the liver we had for dinner in oliver oil, garlic, cumin seed, coriander seed, chillies and mace.  I was supposed to use caraway seed (the marinade is supposed to be the four c's) but I have run out, so I substituted mace (they put it in everything) which Chef Neil told us is a staple of the River Cottage kitchen and it worked superbly.

I had a great day and I want to go back and learn something else.  I've been trawling the website since I've been back looking for another course.  It just goes to show that you can always learn something.  I too have been infected by the River Cottage bug!!