Enrica Rocca Venetian Cookery Classes

Knives out at an Italian cookery course at the London branch of Enrica Rocca’s Cookery School

Basic ingredients: Pronounced “chi-KET-tee”, this is actually the plural of the word cicchetto – the tapas-style finger foods found in abundance in Venetian bars – but it’s most definitely the plural form you’ll need for this four-hour, hands-on cookery course, as you’ll be making enough bite-sized Italian treats to go round the whole class and then some. Many of the cicchetti recipes in the class, run by the “Cooking Countess” Enrica Rocca’s daughters Claire and Charlotte, use polenta and bread, but small sandwiches and mini fish and meat dishes are also on the menu. As well as couchette, students learn to master two of northern Italy’s culinary art forms: a classic seasonal risotto and tiramisu. Dishes are matched with fine Italian wines. Groups comprise no more than 10 people and cost £140 per person. A six-hour variation of the class that includes a morning tour of Portobello Market to gather ingredients and prepares half a dozen dishes including antipasti, pasta and a meat or fish course costs £150.

They say: The chance to serve up a little bit of Venice on a plate – in a lovely kitchen in Notting Hill. We are friendly, lively and really rather brilliantly flamboyant.

We say: Convivial sisters run these two well focused classes that have been honed to perfection over the years and tap in to the hunger for Italian-style tapas of the sort that Russell Norman and Florence Knight have made extremely popular at their Polpo restaurants in London. The original branch of the school still operates in Venice and there is a branch in Cape Town, South Africa.