What brings the act of cooking to life? For some, it means stepping into a world within a world. Each experience, whether sumptuous (a French château) or simple (a palm-fringed Indian island), should have a certain glamour about it, a certain sense of style.
There is a bone-deep pleasure that comes with discovering the unexpected. When you travel across time as well as land, you find magic in ordinary kitchen tools and techniques that have remained unchanged for centuries. It frees the imagination.
Even committed liberal arts majors can appreciate delving into a single topic in detail—the mysteries of artisanal bread-baking, unfamiliar fish species, chile varieties, dim sum crafting, or pan-Asian cuisine. After all, focus brings out the best in every student.
Interspersing kitchen sessions with hikes up a mountain, deep-tissue massages, and yoga sessions at dawn isn’t a bad way to pass your days. And when the skills you’ve picked up translate into a more wholesome diet and routine back home—so much the better.
There’s a reason language students go to live in the homes of native speakers. When you’re swimming in an ocean of information, you absorb it more thoroughly. It may be scary at first, but you’ll soon be talking—and cooking—as if you’ve been there forever.
Barcelona wasn’t built overnight, but you can certainly master the picada in an afternoon. Short courses—from weekend intensives to a few hours at a posh hotel—suit both the skilled and the amateur and have the power to transport you far beyond their confines.
If the idea of toiling over a hot stove leaves you cold, how about popping into the kitchen of a famous cook—at a country house in France, on a remote Greek island, or in a Venetian palazzo, with plenty of time for market tours, wine tastings, and leisurely meals?