Breaks with bite

Pick your own ingredients, work with local chefs and feast alongside new friends at these global cookery classes

Pick your own ingredients and work with local chefs at these global cookery classes

Andalucía

El Carligto runs week-long cooking holidays for groups of eight from its pretty position, on a ridge high in the Axarquía. A delicious exploration of the culinary heritage of this lesser-known corner of Andalucía, each course makes the most of local ingredients such as chivo (a herbaceous-tasting wild mountain goat), quisquillas

(a small shrimp native to that corner of the coast) and sugar-cane honey.

The real highlight, however, is the chance to cook and eat with a different local chef every night. Each one brings a unique perspective to the table, whether it’s reimagining traditional dishes or appropriating Japanese techniques to local ingredients.

From €1,190 pp for seven nights, including accommodation, nightly chef service, two cooking demonstrations and one in-depth cooking course; carligto.com

Morocco

Amanda Belmamoun started the Ourika Organic Kitchen cookery school on her five-acre farm in Morocco’s Ourika Valley two years ago. Set amid an olive grove, with views of the Atlas Mountains, the focus is on the age-old Moroccan tradition of charcoal cooking on a terracotta barbecue.

“It really brings out the flavours of vegetables just plucked from the ground,” Amanda says. “And traditional Moroccan dishes are well suited to slow cooking.”

Guests start their day with a stroll through perfumed tea gardens, before harvesting their own organic vegetables for an al-fresco cookout: try chachouka (grilled pepper and tomato with homemade harissa), smoky aubergine zalouk and organic coquelet (baby chicken) marinated in chermoula. From £160 pp for a full-day course, including transport from Marrakech; @OurikaOrganicKitchenandGardens

San Francisco

Once you’ve eaten your fill at Tartine Bakery and Zuni Café (two of San Francisco’s hippest hot spots), you can ride the Muni – a cute, turn-of-the-century tram that traverses the city – to the Mission District to flick through some culinary literature at specialist book store, Omnivore, before joining a Civic Kitchen cookery class.

Hosted by passionate Bay Area foodies Jen Nurse and Chris Bonomo, they’re perfect workshops for travellers looking to meet locals (most clients are residents) and are taught by the great and the good of the American food scene (including chef Greg Dunmore and Lorraine Witte, whose memoir, A Pot of Rice, extols the virtues of food as meditation). Classes range from pork butchery to doughnuts and Chinese summer dumplings. From £100 pp for four hours, including snacks, lunch or dinner; civickitchensf.com