I am fizzing with enthusiasm this morning! I went to Claverham College last evening for the first of a five week course on Cooking Around the World. I was hoping that the tutor would be good as he does loads of different courses there, and he was. He was extremely good and I loved his style of teaching. He has cheffed (is that even a word?) for many years and in lots of different places, including running his own restaurant for 10 years, and he has taught for many years too, and enjoys the teaching very much, and he is certainly good at it

We packed a lot of cooking into our 2 hours. We started off with Imam Bayildi, a stuffed aubergine. We stuffed it with tomato, onion, garlic and lemon, put it in the oven and moved on to Lamb Kofta Kebabs, with a relish that was like raita.

Then we made some buttery and spicy rice, which was cooked in the oven with the aubergine, and finished up with hoummous. He was generous with the tahini and it is fab.

I’ve just made a flat bread and I’ll be having that with kofta, a dollop of the hoummous and raita and some salad at lunchtime. Then this evening, I’ll be having aubergine and some of the rice. A fab start to the course, and I am hopeful that the other weeks will be as good