I am mostly a self-taught cook. I learnt the basics from my mum and dad and since then my cooking repertoire has expanded through cookbooks and magazines, sharing recipes and ideas with friends, and playing around in the kitchen inventing new dishes from random ingredients. I guess it’s been a moderately successful approach as I like to think that I am a competent cook if not a spectacular one. I have my weak spots (I’ve never made custard, for example) but I also have my strengths (salads, Italian and Asian food).

That’s all going to change because I have signed up to do a course at Leiths School of Food and Wine in west London. I wanted to do it partly because I’ve been getting into food writing (both blogging and articles) and mostly just because I thought it would be fun. I’m just doing an amateur course but even that was a 10 week commitment and a bill in the vicinity of £600.

I chose the Confident Cooking course rather than the Beginners course as I thought it was better to challenge myself than to waste the money on learning things I already knew. That’s lucky as I think it’s definitely going to be a challenge! My first class was last night and we supposedly started off easy, with choux pastry, aubergine and prosciutto gougere, and chocolate and sour cherry biscuits. I found the choux pastry quite challenging actually - we had to melt butter in water, then bring it to a rising boil, then remove it from the heat, quickly add sifited flour and, in the words of the instructor, “beat it to billy-o”. Then we had to slowly add beaten egg until it would “easily but reluctantly” fall off the spoon. Fortunately there was lots of help on hand and it turned out fine. We get to take the food home afterwards so my fridge and pantry is stocked with goodies and I’m going to fill the pastry case with the gougere tonight and bake it for my dinner.

I’ll report back every week on what we make and how I’m finding the course, so please subscribe to make sure you don’t miss future posts in the series.

• * Strawberries will be in season in England in another month or two and I’m definitely going to try out this recipe for strawberry panzanella from 101 Cookbooks. I’ve never had, or even heard of a ‘panzanella’ before but mushy strawberries, crusty, toasty bread, and yogurt sounds like a cracking combination and the photos look great.

• * A Forkful of Spaghetti has blogged about dinner at Launceston Place, a restaurant with Michelin-starred chef Tristan Welch at the helm. It’s pretty clear that she liked it!

• * Guardian Unlimited’s Word of Mouth raises the thorny issue of UK restaurants abusing their staff and the good will of dining patrons by keeping tips, or using them to fund the minimum wage.

• * Eggplants (aubergines) are one of my favourite vegetables. A Veggie Venture has a fab sounding recipe for eggplant steaks - looks simple and tasty!

• * Pixie from You Say Tomahto, I Say Tomayto has posted about her mother’s Maltese squid stew. It sounds fantastic!

• * Browners on Around Britain with a Paunch questions whether the current mania for local food is really good old fashioned protectionism.

• * Bakerella was on the Martha Stewart show and super-excited to be there.

• * Everything you ever needed to know about preparing and eating artichokes, from Food Blogga.

• * And for dessert, here’s some ginger ice cream from Cafe Lynnylu. Beautifully photographed, as this blog invariably is.

If you are visiting the West Country in England, there is one thing you should know. It is compulsory to eat cream tea in Cornwall and Devon. Seriously.

Cream tea is scones with jam and clotted cream and proper black tea in a teapot. In Australia we usually call this ‘Devonshire tea’ but this is wrong on two counts. Firstly, there is great dispute between Cornwall and Devon over who first invented the artery-clogging afternoon tea, so some might argue it should be called ‘Cornish tea’. (Just as there is now dispute between the two counties over the origins of Cornish pasties, and between Australia and New Zealand over pavlova). Secondly, the key to cream tea is that it is made with clotted cream. Whipped cream is just not the same.

Clotted cream is made by cooking the cream to reduce the liquid, and it is thick and yellowy, often with crusty bits. It tastes quite different to butter and doesn’t have the same melting properties. A scoop of clotted cream looks like vanilla ice cream, but unlike ice cream or whipped cream, you can serve it with hot apple pie (for example) and it won’t melt.

When I went to Cornwall, I was told a legend about the origins of clotted cream. The story goes that a Phoenician sea king who had been blown off course taught the secret of clotted cream to a Cornish housewife. This may even contain a kernel of truth since the Lebanese and Turks still make something very similar today. But, apparently there is another legend from Devon, involving a princess who lived in an oak tree and some ‘piskies’.

Cream tea is to be found all over Cornwall and Devon. This one (eaten yesterday) is from a little tea house in a village in Dartmoor, Devon. My favourite places are farm houses that serve homemade cream teas during the summer, but the tea rooms in the towns are not bad either. I have had cream tea in other parts of the country as well but it’s not the same - in the Cotswolds it felt like a honey trap for the tour buses and American tourists. It was lovely in Yorkshire but it was a full meal with sandwiches as well.

I do believe it’s a crime to go to Cornwall or Devon and not partake of at least one cream tea. But a mini cream tea is definitely allowed - the serves tend to be generous and it’s all rather filling and fattening.

With my Phileas Fogg cap on, I have hit the road for a month. It’s a mammoth world trip, combining Australia, Nicaragua, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. Nicaragua was obviously a detour but it’s for work so a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

All this has left me with plenty to write about, from the phenomenal steaks of Nicaragua to the spicy salads of Cambodia. I have profiled two restaurants, one in Hong Kong and one in Bangkok, and I have partaken of far too much airline food. In fact, it seems I have partaken in too much food, full stop; despite my best efforts, my clothes are tighter now than at the start of the trip. However, my blogging desires have been stymied by the lack of a sturdy internet connection and, most importantly, time.

Normal blogging service should resume soon.