Katie Grant, Telegraph Weekend, 3 May 2003
Rosemary Shrager used to cook in paradise and now paradise is lost. Anybody who went, as I did, to Amhuinnsuidhe (pronounced Avensui) Castle, the magical, home of Jonathan Bulmer on the Isle of Harris, came away not only with their palate rejuvenated but bowled over by the wild beauty of the place. At dinner, you never knew where to look - at your plate of castellated crab or out over the Sound of Taransay. An island cookery school has a very particular atmosphere that is impossible to create in more ordinary surroundings.
Or is it? The Hebridean fairytale may be over now that Bulmer has sold Amhuinnsuidhe, but Shrager's cookery school has recently moved to Swinton Park, a castle set in 200 acres at Masham in North Yorkshire, owned by the Cunliffe-Lister family. With deer in the park, acres of walled vegetable garden and a Gothic orangery, the English country house does not come much grander. Shrager admits to crying "Eek!" on first seeing the size of the main house, now an extremely comfortable family-run hotel. She had been hoping for something cosier, but the Cunliffe-Listers soon reassured her.
Cookery school guests will sleep in the hotel but will be otherwise based in the 18th-century stable wing, a picture-perfect building topped off with an original Harrison clock. Here they will cook, eat, lounge, drink, gossip and be subjected to Shrager's intensive, high-voltage teaching.
Being separated from the hotel will be a good thing for any guests who have come seeking a quiet time, because Shrager is as unstinting on noise as she is on the finest ingredients and the best techniques. Her laugh is gloriously uninhibited and she encourages her students to enjoy themselves as much as she does. "People want to have fun as well as learn," she says, as she basks in the afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows of the new cookery school's dining-room.
The stable wing is being done up to Rosemary's specifications, sponsored by a litany of kitchen legends: Aga - Rosemary's will be racing green - Neff, Lacanche, Furi Knives, Le Creuset, Magimix, Kenwood. Shrager is so excited that she scarcely draws breath. Once memorably described as "the cook from central casting" because she is large in both physique and personality, she does not dwell on the island she has lost but on the great estate she has gained. "No midges here," she says, as she bustles about chatting to the workmen. "We will be able to eat outside. Also, the kitchen is much bigger." I am swept along in a tidal wave of enthusiasm that makes even me, the most reluctant of cooks, fancy having a go.
When she kicks off her shoes and we eventually sit down, it occurs to me that, actually, Shrager is not the cook from central casting. She doesn't have the ego for that. Graduating from art college as "the worst artist in the whole world", she was doing the technical drawings for the lavatories at John Tovey's Miller Howe Hotel in Windermere when she realised that she cared nothing for loos and everything for kitchens.
She taught herself to cook from books and pestered chefs when she got stuck. "They always said, 'Start again,'" she says cheerfully, "so I always did." Despite stints working for Pierre Koffmann and Jean-Christophe Novelli, her lack of formal training makes her curiously shy. Her reputation seems to surprise her, and praise for her creations makes her blush. "I always feel that because I didn't go to college, I have something missing," she says.
Well, she is wrong, for when she approaches a kitchen or talks about food, Shrager's eyes glint like those of a steeplechaser approaching its favourite racecourse. She dreams about food, and the thought of all the fish just over the horizon at Whitby makes her voice rise several octaves. Bouillabaisse is on the menu for day two of her first programme, which begins in June. Scallops will still be sent down from Harris but dishes will also rely on local produce.
The promise of vegetables and fruit grown in the garden sets Shrager off on another train of thought. Her "classic food with a modern twist" includes a great love of preserving and, before I know it, we are mentally pickling lemons. For Shrager, the point of food is to nourish and to please. I have seen a table of discerning gourmets silenced by her chicken and potato pie. At Amhuinnsuidhe, the call of the hills and sea were rather distracting. Here in Yorkshire, the natural beauty is of a different, more homely kind, complementing the fantastic spectacle that is Shrager at work.
Leeds/Bradford airport and the Al may not sound as romantic as Stornoway and the road to Hushinish Point, but the Yorkshire Dales can more than hold their own. It says something about Rosemary Shrager that many returning "cookery coursers" will find that although the geography has changed, the personnel remain the same, with Bridget Miller Mundy still doing front-of-house and other familiar faces grinning from the prep kitchen. Some island magic has, it seems, followed Shrager down to Swinton's rolling acres.
