Harthill @ Home #Blog

If you’re anything like us – we’ve been spending much more time in the kitchen throughout all of the lockdowns. Cooking for the family using some of our great local produce has been therapeutic to say the least, through this incredibly challenging time.

Not only to do we champion our local food and drink businesses, but we also celebrate some of our wonderful local chefs who have adapted their offerings and services to help us create more exciting and daring dishes in the kitchen.

Brian Mellor is one of those fabulous chefs who is now able to come right into our kitchens to give us a virtual helping hand. Brian is one of Cheshire’s best loved chefs. He has represented the region on many a national occasions and is well known for his teaching skills. Pre covid, he ran regular cookery courses in his fabulous award winning cookery school Harthill – and now he is ready to continue his superb teaching in the comfort of your own kitchen. He was also given the super-prestigious Taste Cheshire Lifetime award in 2019.

You can sign up to any of Brian’s online courses for just £15 for a one-hour session. Brian will send you a list of ingredients, a work plan, recipes and a Zoom log in a week before the session. All you need to do is make yourselves comfortable, pour a glass of wine and get cooking with a live and interactive demo at home.

Brian is currently offering courses covering every aspect of cookery including knife skills, pastry skills and many more masterclasses including Insight into the wood fire burning oven. Learn to chop and slice like a chef, make sauces, cook the perfect steak, spicy street food, delicious desserts and more. I’ve booked in for Pan roasted cod with a mustard chive sauce, Sticky fried chicken and fried rice and Sticky toffee pudding and rich toffee sauce – there are many more dishes to choose from suitable for novices through to passionate cooks.

You can join a scheduled session or bring a group of your friends together for a virtual cook along and share a social supper, and you can join in from wherever you are. This is a super-sociable activity available to everyone, whether you’re cooking for one or for your family or support bubble. This is most definitely one occasion where too many cooks do not spoil the broth!