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By Beverley Nielsen | Approach Mark and Annie’s home from the High Street in Hadleigh, Suffolk, and you see a smart shop front leading into a veritable Aladdin’s cave for cookery fans. Approach it from the back and you enter through an old graveyard for the house is built on the site of a former chapel of the Congregational Church.
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Searing professionalism and loads of witty charm: Mark David in his cookery school | Nothing about the place is quite what you expect. But then Mark – who runs The Cooking Experience with his wife, Annie – himself is a larger-than-life character and his house reflects this with its meticulous attention to detail and searing professionalism topped with bucket loads of witty charm.
Within the shop area, Mark has built a cookery school with two cookers – a 4-oven Aga and a Masterchef – a demonstration work table, fridges, spice racks, shelving, hanging pots and pans galore.
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Aladdin's cave for cookery fans: The Cooking Experience | It’s from here that Mark and Annie run The Cooking Experience, offering courses running from half-days to residential weekends for up to eight at a time. A former Egon Ronay inspector who started working in a kitchen at the age of 17, Mark is well known to readers of Aga magazine for his regular contributions.
His team includes Emma – who’s appeared on the BBC Food and Drink Show, Ready Steady Cook and Chef’s School – Stuart, their business partner, and, of course, Sally the dog.
Guests can expect a very special experience: “I say to people you’ve stepped out of your box and you’re in mine now…and it’s all about you from here on in. At the end of each session we sit and have a chat and a drink and eat the bread and food we’ve cooked.
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Tools of the trade: Pots and pans and the essential 4-Oven Aga in Black | “I just love meeting people from all over the country, finding out about their lives and showing them how they can really enjoy cooking, how they can feel as passionate about it as I do!
“I teach them how to cook on an Aga which for many people is a novel experience. I love cooking on the Aga because about 85% of the cooking is done inside the Aga. I use the ovens to fry, boil vegetables and pasta or for cooking rice. This means you can free up the top plates to do something else – it’s great for multi-tasking families and so much safer than having water boiling away on the top of an oven.
“I love pasta making. Take 200g of 00 Flour – it’s very refined so you can make a very smooth paste. Add 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, a dessertspoon of olive oil. Magimix the whole lot and knead for 5 minutes. Put it through the pasta machine and, hey presto, the most wonderful pasta! Bread is one of my other all time favourites.
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Pride of place: Mark's mother's 2-Oven Aga in British Racing Green in his own kitchen | Mark learned to cook on his mother’s Aga and this dashing British Racing Green model now has pride of place in his own kitchen just behind the shop.
His relationship with Aga began in 1994 when he first started helping out the local Aga distributor. Since then this relationship has blossomed and he is now happy to help out in Aga shops all over the country, from Harrogate and Knutsford to Tunbridge Wells.
He is loved by his audiences for his unpretentious, down-to-earth approach to cooking and because you cannot be with Mark and not love the experience of cooking as much as he does, as well as having a lot of fun.
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All the right ingredients: the spice rack | Glancing through his distinguished visitors’ book, my eye catches a poem by one satisfied guest who wrote:
Quick, entertaining, cooked with ease
Bread, pancakes, parcels and peas
Mediterranean lamb with Moroccan spice
Couscous too which was really nice
Italian – we tasted pasta galore
Antipasto, calves’ liver and so much more
Tasty fish soup and divine cassoulet
‘Coq’ with wine just made my day
Next year I’ll be back – just wait and see
Thank you so much Mark (Sally) and Annie!
For details of The Cooking Experience or to book a course visit www.cookingexperience.co.uk. Courses start from £105 per head per day.
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