Our Residential Cookery Course
Our 4 week cookery course will provide invaluable hands-on cookery training in a caring and friendly environment. You will receive an excellent grounding in all aspects of cooking and will be able to cater for small functions, work on a yacht, or in a chalet kitchen for a ski season; or run your own catering business.
Your confidence will grow in leaps and bounds during the first week of the cookery course. You will develop basic cookery techniques and experience first-hand the delight that comes from seeing your skill levels improve. The spacious purpose-built kitchen has been designed to allow easy access to all cookery equipment and comfortably accommodates our students as they prepare and cook delicious dishes. Be sure to take a virtual tour of our cookery school kitchen.
 It really was such an amazing experience and has had such an incredible effect,
transforming me from someone who had the most basic cookery skills to someone
who would feel confident working in a professional kitchen. - James de la F 
In fact our cookery courses are very much about how to work in a busy environment. Lunch and evening meal production is a group effort and the turning out of high quality and well presented food for a set time teaches all students the importance of 'team work' where tolerance and cooperation are key survival skills, especially when the kitchen gets busy and hot.
The cookery course syllabus also includes how to source and use ingredients, menu planning, use of available kitchen space and equipment, budgeting and stock control, client liaison including handling complaints and cooking at altitude and in other difficult conditions. We also include a session on matching food with wine. In addition housekeeping skills such as cleaning and bed making are also covered where required.
Our cookery courses teach you how to scale up your working for larger numbers of guests, a very important skill when catering in chalets or restaurants. We also cover dining etiquette including formal and informal table laying and teach kitchen management, organisation and hygiene. We are a Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene registered training and examination centre for the Foundation Food Hygiene Certificate.
Thank you very much for your time and attention on such a wonderful course. The skills I have learned
will now be with me for the rest of my life and will prove invaluable. - Edward L
Course fees include accommodation, breakfast, lunch and dinner. You do not need to bring any special cookery equipment, you will be provided with everything you need to enable effective learning. This includes a well researched and presented 500 page course book (yours to keep and make notes in). Past students call it their bible!
Finally, we offer our students free use of a nearby luxurious four star sport and fitness centre (including a wonderful pool) at Tortworth Court which gives you a chance to relax after a hard day’s work in the kitchen or a chance to burn of some of the delicious food you have created. ( http://www.four-pillars.co.uk/Tortworth/lclub.html)
Our approach to your Cookery Training
The Gables School of Cookery has an excellent teacher/student ratio, with one to one help for students experiencing difficulty. We are a small personal school and get to know our students well. We help students on the cookery courses with development of their CV’s and discuss career options. We also provide follow up support once students have left our cookery school, offering advice and help with job seeking and circulating incoming vacancies.
Our students develop good practical cookery skills, which they can apply confidently in a range of environments. In addition to clear practical tuition we provide close support with the development of their cooking skills to the standard that you would expect to find in a good restaurant.
Our four week cookery courses are multi-disciplinary and typically have a mixture of yacht, ski chalet, gap year, people wanting to work in hotels/restaurants and those planning to run their own catering businesses. The beauty of this arrangement is that you will be exposed to a wide range of influences.
You may well come on a course intending to work in ski chalet cookery and end up going into yacht cookery. In summary in addition to teaching you to cook to a very high standard the four week cookery course also offers an invaluable way to re-assess your career or business plans.
 
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