Chania: Authentic Cooking Class

About This Experience

Chania Cooking Class runs out of a family home in Nerokourou, a village close enough to Chania that a taxi costs very little and far enough out that you are cooking in someone's kitchen rather than in a venue built for visitors. Your host, Veerna, has been selling her kalitsounia locally for years, and neighbours dropping in to say hello is part of the afternoon rather than a staged touch.

You are met with a homemade refreshment or a Greek coffee and cookies while the menu is explained, and then the lamb goes into the wood-fired stone oven first, because it needs more than two hours. The name it goes by - the thieves' dinner - comes with the history behind it, which is one of the better pieces of teaching in any class on the island.

While the oven works you make everything else: stuffed vegetables and dolmades, with the herbs and vegetables for the filling picked from the garden; rolled grape leaves, which is the fiddly skill everyone arrives unable to do and leaves able to do; then kalitsounia dough rolled out and filled with cheese and wild greens. Tzatziki and dakos are made last and eaten first.

Then you sit down to all of it, with a generous amount of local wine and raki, and something sweet at the end. Four hours, no transport, no rush - the closest thing on this site to being fed in a Cretan house.

Highlights

• Cook in a family home in Nerokourou, 15 minutes from Chania
• Learn kalitsounia from a host who has sold them locally for years
• Use herbs and vegetables picked from the garden that morning
• Bake lamb in a wood-fired stone oven and hear the history behind it

What's Included

• ✓ Hands-on cooking class
• ✓ All ingredients and equipment
• ✓ Full lunch or dinner of everything you cook
• ✓ Generous local wine and raki throughout

Not Included

• Transport to and from Nerokourou

What to Bring

• Comfortable closed shoes
• Sun protection

Good to Know & Caveats

• Transport is not included. Nerokourou is 10-15 minutes from central Chania by car or taxi; park along the fence when you arrive.
• The lamb needs more than two hours in the wood-fired oven, so the class is built around that timing and starts promptly.
• Wine and raki are poured generously throughout - worth planning your drive or taxi home around.
• This is a home kitchen with a real garden, so the menu shifts a little with what is ready to pick.

Meeting Point

The kitchen is in Nerokourou, 10-15 minutes from the centre of Chania. Transport is not included - drive or take a taxi, and park along the fence.