Select Team Cooks their Way to Fine Dining

On a cold and crisp November day, the whole of Select Team (including future colleague Jo Morrison) met up at Exeter cookery school for a full day of developing new culinary skills and techniques.

The day included learning how to make pasta from scratch, using an insane number of free-range eggs. The smooth pasta dough was then turned into scrumptious spinach, ricotta and whole egg-yolk ravioli.  Complete focus was required to close-up each delicate raviolo, removing all air bubbles but without breaking the yolk which was sitting comfortably on top of the spinach and ricotta filing.

The ravioli were then cooked to be the centre-piece of a well-deserved lunch, comprising a bed of rocket salad with mustard dressing, some wild mushrooms sautéed in butter, grilled bacon and Parmesan shavings. This was enjoyed by all present, following the opening of the first Christmas crackers of the season.

The afternoon was spent working with chocolate to make a chocolate delice, a yummy dessert with a crunchy nutty base, covered with a rich chocolate ganache and finished by a chocolate mirror glaze.

A lot of skills, bowls, pans and pots were involved as well some blow torches!

After a full-on day learning new skills away from desks and computers, we all went home with a bag of home-cooked goodies and some sore feet.