What's cooking: homely goodness in The Kitchen

Cookery school has come a long way since my school days, where we had to carry old fashioned baskets with our ingredients in for Home Ec (nostalgic or what!). Nowadays, cookery school is all fun, funky and fast - a chance to catch up with friends or go on blind dates (as we think the people next to us were, quite amusingly) - and really enjoy putting a meal together without having to do any washing up. Bliss!

Last Sunday, my friend Sarah and I headed down to one of the more picturesque parts of London, pretty little Parsons Green, to visit The Kitchen - a new concept in cooking: part-fancy cafe, part-laidback cook school, run by Michelin starred chef Thierry Laborde.

We picked the menu before hand (spicy Moroccan kebabs with couscous for her, traditional fish pie for me; chickpea and cumin falafel for both of us, juicy red onion salad and gorgeous apple and pear vanilla crumble for afters) - and after a leisurely hot chocolate, headed over to our work stations, where our recipes were laid out in front of us, ready to go.

I wish I had time to go through every recipe here (sadly I don't) and I wish I remembered to take photos of the food when plated up fresh from the oven in my place (I forgot) but it was a lot of fun. The downside is that time and space means you can't really claim to have made it all from scratch yourself - the fish had been poached for us before we arrived, for instance - but the rest of it really was hands on. I learnt to pipe potatoes instead of just spooning on, and was mighty proud of the falafel which turned out wonderful (mix fork-mashed up chickpeas with tahini paste, lots of finely diced red onion, cumin, coriander - then lightly flour, dip in egg and roll in breadcrumbs before shallow frying until warm) and no where near as dry and flaky as the shop bought stuff. End result? We were stuffed. A lovely way to spend a Sunday - I look forward to doing it again!