Turn yourself into a masterchef during a cookery holiday

GoLearnTo.com features in the Daily Mail today with their great value cookery holidays.

Cooking breaks: How to master moussaka, conquer couscous and turn yourself into a masterchef during a food-flavoured holiday…

With cookery shows all over the television and Britain ever fascinated by matters of the kitchen, holidays where you can learn to cook are currently en vogue. From preparing tagines in Morocco to choosing chorizo on Portugal, Lucy Gillmore picks the best culinary breaks.

Turkish delight

Pick fresh vine leaves to stuff for lunch, mooch around the market and cook red lentil soup on an open fire in a hilltop village above the Aegean coast of Turkey.

The rural retreat, surrounded by olive and pine trees, has a vegetable and herb garden. Women from the village will teach you traditional techniques, including how to bake bread in a traditional oven and make real Turkish coffee.

Secret ingredient: Relax in the retreat’s treehouse or flop on beautiful beaches, only a 15-minute drive away.

Details: A one-week Turkish cookery holiday in Turkey, including seven nights full-board, daily cookery lessons and day trips costs from £500pp (0844 502 0445, golearnto.com). Aegean Flights flies from London to Bodrum from £218pp (0844 870 0033, www.aegean flights.com).

Choose chorizo

Portugal’s cuisine has long been overshadowed by its neighbour, Spain, but there’s more to food here than salted cod, the national dish.

The Refugio da Vila cooking school is in a 19th-century manor house in Portel, a beautiful village inland from Lisbon in the Alentejo region. Learn to make traditional dishes such as escabeche of sardines.

Secret ingredient: The walled city, Evora, a Unesco World Heritage site, full of gothic churches and moorish palaces.

Details: A three-day cookery course costs from £180pp and includes two nights’ B&B and one cookery lesson (08445 020 445, golearnto.com). British Airways flies from London to Lisbon from £124 return (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com).