Nourishment for the soul – and stomach – at Elizabeth Fawcett’s cookery school in Hawes

“I put a note on Facebook to ask if anybody was near Catterick Tesco and the driver, Andy, said he was there and would pop in and get it for me. Wasn’t that lovely of him?”

It’s a gesture that is typical of this small Dales community, struggling in what they hoped was the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, but which is beginning to feel like an ever-present and overwhelming global threat.

The Humble Pie Cookery Kitchen, above Bear Interiors in the town’s market square, was forced into lockdown just three weeks after launching in February, and although it reopened in July, restrictions on numbers present Elizabeth with some tough challenges, she tells me later.

But for now it’s down to business as the curry class gets underway. It starts promisingly: in the time it takes myself and three young companions to take off our coats and don the (locally-made) aprons she provides, Elizabeth prepares a batch of raspberry scones.

“We’ll have these with our coffee while the naan bread proves,” she says.

I’m not convinced I can even make naan bread, never mind the vegetable samosas, onion bhajis, and Bombay potatoes which will accompany the four different curries we will cook between us: hot beef, mild chicken, Elizabethan lamb and a vegetarian tagine.

It all looks a bit daunting. I’ve somehow managed to raise a family without actually poisoning them, but the reason my three daughters have become competent cooks owes more to their survival instincts than my culinary skills. “We cooked in self-defence,” says one.

I’ve never been an office recipe-swapper, either: I have quite enough of my own, untried and untested, along with a whole shelf of threateningly pristine cookbooks.

However, on the grounds that it really is never too late to learn, and with so many people bragging of newly-honed skills during lockdown, as the cookery school gets back on its feet I have decided to put myself to the test.

We work, Covid-aware, at separate work stations. One of the consequences of the virus for the school has been the necessity to virtually halve the numbers of “students” on any one day. Normally six, it’s now three, unless there’s a pair from a family bubble which today there is.

It speaks volumes about Elizabeth’s attitude to food in general and – luckily for me – cookery classes in particular, that her main motivation is enjoyment: in the preparation as much as the end result.

“I’ve never made filo pastry in my life,” she says, as we get down to work on the veggie samosas. “Why would you when you can buy it ready-made and perfect from the supermarket?” Stock cubes (“when did vegetable stock taste of anything but water?”) lazy chillies (“real chillies are unreliable”) and ready-made curry paste, all put in a welcome appearance.

“My aim is to give people confidence to cook a delicious meal, take it home and enjoy it, and then replicate it,” she says, “not put them off for life so they think you have to be an expert pastry chef before you can make a decent pie.”

Or even a samosa.

Cheating is fine, is the message, though not on the basics – we have for our recipes mountains of the best local meat, the freshest of vegetables and some home-grown herbs. We can’t escape entirely some grating and chopping, slicing and popping – the latter of cardamon pods, a first for me and surprisingly satisfying. Like bubble wrap, but with results.

We chatted and clattered as scales and mixing bowls, whisks, spoons and super-sharp knives were extracted from cupboards and drawers, and before we knew it the naan bread was proving and coffee and scones were served.

As we returned to the main business, Elizabeth directed the four of us in our separate endeavours, each making a different curry, moving between us but managing still to maintain a distance, sometimes demonstrating, mainly encouraging, always – but always – cheerful and at ease and never, ever, critical.

Then she’s back at her own table whittling away at a fresh mango for the experimental sweet samosas, mango and coconut, that we will take away as an extra treat at the end of the session.

We each washed up as we went along, and the atmosphere unconsciously engendered was that of a busy farmhouse family kitchen, not unlike the one Elizabeth knew as a girl, growing up in Stalling Busk with her siblings and mum, the late Margaret Baker, at whose knee she learnt many of her skills.

We each end the half-day session with a substantial meal for four, enough leftovers for the weekend and a feeling that for the £45 fee, reduced for a couple working together, we got more than value for money.

In the exchange of Facebook messages that inevitably followed, fellow student Gemma spoke for us all: “In the Dale we all know Elizabeth’s cooking style is nourishing and generous, but this morning’s curry class, full of love and laughter, was nourishment for both the soul and the belly! Loved every minute. Thank you Elizabeth.”

"You're not on your own. . ."

THE cookery school was Elizabeth’s baby, born unexpectedly into a Covid world after months of planning and saving. Forced through exhaustion to give up the hugely popular Humble Pie deli, takeaway and café which she ran in Askrigg with daughter Betty, she wanted a new outlet for her culinary passions. Sharing them through a cookery school seemed the ideal solution. Lockdown came and went, the school reopened in July, but less than a month ago, tearful and depressed, Elizabeth was on the verge of giving up, unable to see a way through the restrictions imposed by social distancing.

“I’m not by nature a depressive person, but here I was crying in the doctor’s surgery and feeling absolutely desperate. I didn’t see how I could keep the business going. It knocked my knees from under me and it felt as if someone was laughing at me, mocking me almost, for having thought I could make success of it. There was a stigma attached, because when you run your own business your whole self is somehow bound up in it. It’s who you are, and if it fails you feel you are failing as a person.

“My concern is that a lot of people must be feeling like this now, and I want to say to them 'it’s not your fault. Don’t let failure, through no fault of your own, define you. Find a way to get some help by whatever means works for you'.”

What brought her back from the brink of closure?

“I visited my daughter in London, the first break I’d had since before Christmas. It gave me rest and peace. Then Julie [Atkinson] Elizabeth’s landlord and owner of Bear Cottage, said 'let’s work together and see what can be done'. Like so many people in the Dales, she has been supportive and positive throughout. And I got a paid job, two days a week, to give me some security.

“And then I had this vision: the ghost of Christmas future. I imagined having to sell all my lovely kitchen equipment, and pictured people poring over it on a cheap market stall, asking ‘Will you take a fiver?’ I couldn’t bear it. I just couldn’t bear it."