The Vegi Table

Based at Claremont Kitchen is The Vegi-Table, a cookery school which celebrates vegetarian and vegan cooking.

Claremont Kitchen is the perfect home for The Vegi-Table, the kitchen overlooks 250 acres of farmland devoted to cereals, vegetables (notably asparagus) and fruit lovingly farmed by the Pimbley family for four generations, and naturally seemed the perfect place to share Mo and Sarah’s passion for simple healthy cooking using outstanding local produce.

The Vegi-Table courses are excellent for vegetarians, but meat-eaters will learn how to make vegetables interesting and exciting, learn more about healthy cooking and eating and will learn how to make delicious meals and accompaniments.

The courses provide a wide variety of different cookery techniques, and use many different ingredients. There are practical workshops, which are based around individual techniques like ‘Slicing and Dicing’, where not only will you learn how to use your knife correctly but also to make hearty Tuscan bean soup and seasonal fruit tarts (lined with chocolate) and a posh coleslaw with celeriac, fennel and red cabbage. Other workshops include Pizza Pasta Pesto and Just Bread, where you learn the art of making bread from basic dough to Turkish flat bread, followed by fougasse and a variety of rolls, bread "shots" and poppy seed stars.

Alternatively, you can opt for the ‘mix and match’ courses which combine being hands-on in the kitchen with demonstrations. The most popular courses by far are the Taste of Summer Veg or the Taste of Winter Veg. In the summer you can find out how to make the most of the gorgeous summer produce available; from courgette cake, super-stuffed tomatoes, courgette & feta fritters, to muhummara (a North African dip of roasted peppers and pomegranate molasses), plus two very special salads - one with beetroot and goats cheese and the other featuring cucumber and raspberries. During the winter months you can experiment with a huge range of recipes for traditional British winter vegetables that very often end up being boiled or mashed. As well as side dishes such as cauliflower a la Greque, celeriac soup, red cabbage and pomegranate and Brussel sprouts with apples, they'll also show you how to make a perfect parsnip tarte tartin, a delicious carrot & cashew pate, slow baked onions. For dessert you'll have a seasonal plum compote and a scrumptious sweet potato tart.