Prices from £450 to £1,775 ­ including your stay in the wonderful house.IrelandBallymaloe Cookery School, tel: 00 353 21 4646 785, The charismatic Darina Allen is the star of Irish cooking, and this is a great school for both professionals and amateurs. Courses generally run from April to July and last between one day (£110) and five (£420) ­ or five months, if you’re really serious. The school is set in the apple store of a Regency house in County Cork, and accommodation (around £15 per night) is in farm cottages. Local produce is key but the courses are wide-ranging ­ including lessons on Thai and Vietnam cuisine.FranceLa Varenne, tel: 00 333 8663 1834, Cookery writer Anne Willan was born in Newcastle but has run this superior haute-cuisine school for 25 years, turning out top professionals but welcoming keen amateurs.

You’re picked up in Paris and whisked down to Burgundy to the magnificent 17th-century Ch?au du F? complete with swimming pool and tennis-court. Then it’s five days of the region’s food and wine ­ as authentic and serieux as you can get (Willan is on first-name terms with most of France’s best chefs, some of whom work for her). Courses run in June and cost around £2,300.SpainPata Negra, tel: 01732 750 174, User-friendly, warming introductions to the regional cooking of Spain. Pata Negra runs courses in San Sebastian (Spain’s number-one gourmet city) and Seville.

Spend a week in Andalucia learning some tricks from Sam Clark of London’s famous Spanish restaurant, Moro (£1,330).ItalyTasting Places, tel: 020 7460 0077, Modern British cooking star Alastair Little is one of the forces behind this inspired group of cookery schools in Thailand, Greece and throughout Italy (Tuscany, Sicily, Umbria, Veneto) They retain star cooks such as Peter Gordon. A week in Tuscany costs £1,390.Gourmet on Tour, tel: 020 7396 5550, Courses around the world. Try one of the bases in Tuscany, Umbria, Lombardy, Venice or Amalfi. Prices and durations vary, but a week in an Amalfi school costs around £1,600.United StatesSanta Fe School of Cookery, tel: 001 505 983 4511 A tremendously efficient and friendly place to learn. Once poor people’s food, based on beans, corn and pumpkin, the cooking of the South-West is now one of the most fashionable in the US, and there’s no better way to learn than to go there yourself and trying these classes on South-Western, traditional New Mexican or Mexican food. Demonstration-based classes last around three hours and cost around £30 to £70 Santa Fe is a beautiful city. MexicoSeasons of My Heart, Oaxaca, tel: 00 52 951 518 7726, Susana Trilling, an American of Mexican descent, brought alive Mexican regional cooking in the US with a 13-part television series, and has written fascinating, authentic books too.

The school is in a valley plain half an hour out of the town of Oaxaca, with everything from Aztec ruins to the fabulous Mercado de Abastos, which beats most other markets A week-long course costs around £1,100. BaliFour Seasons Jimbaran Bay, tel: 00 800 6488 6488, The school I visited most recently. Six nights of sheer luxury cost £2,400 per couple in a one-bedroom villa. One of you gets to go on the course of four three-to-four-hour modules (available individually for £62 each).. First it was meant to open for Christmas 2001 Then it was aimed at the Cannes festival for 2002 At present, there’s talk of a July opening.