I’m not well known for my cooking skills. In fact, you could say the lack of them is almost a source of humour in our family.

But an invitation to go and cook with the rather dashing Spanish chef Omar Allibhoy was not to be missed, even if my culinary incompetence would soon be exposed for all to see.

The course, held at Cheshire Cookery School in Altrincham, focussed on cooking with olives, an essential ingredient in the Mediterranean diet. And love them or hate them – eating olives is very much in fashion and not necessarily just as something to nibble while you’re waiting for your first course.

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Omar, a chef who has appeared on TV numerous times and has a successful tapas restaurant in London, spoke about his passion for olives and how readily available they are in his Spanish home, near Madrid. Most of us have to settle for buying them in our local supermarket or delicatessen, but there is still a huge array of olives on the market.

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He then described in detail how to prepare our dessert (we did this first so that it had time to set in the fridge). Olives as a sweet is a new concept to me, but add cherries in sweet sherry syrup with a goat’s cheese, a touch of vanilla and double cream and your taste buds may very well explode.

Unfortunately, while Omar was doing his demo, I was so busy drinking wine and tweeting, that I couldn’t remember which order to do things in and ended up anxiously bunging everything in the same pan. This didn’t work at all.

The pressure was on and I felt like I was on Masterchef - or at least the Comic Relief version. But luckily for me, Omar is much nicer than all those other TV chefs and also incredibly patient. My dessert was a write-off but he gave me the ‘one he’d prepared earlier’ and I blatantly passed it off as my own.

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Making the olive pate was more straightforward, as all of the ingredients – green and black olives, cheese, pistachio nuts, olive oil, fennel seeds and a pinch of this and that, were thrown into a food processor. Thirty seconds later I had a smooth, consistent tapenade – good enough to be served in an actual restaurant no less.

By the time we embarked on the main course, my confidence had improved and I was starting to feel like Nigella.

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Could beef meatballs stuffed with olives in a tomato sauce become my signature dish? Omar humoured me, but did offer constructive criticism regarding my rookie chopping skills.

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At the end, we all sat together at a huge table and ate the mouthwatering fruits of our labour along with some deliciously chunky white bread and carefully selected wines. Heaven! It felt very Mediterranean, despite it being dark and grey outside, and we were all chatting like old friends before long.

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I’d been indifferent to olives before, but this magnificent spread of olive-themed dishes had converted me. I may have come out a better cook than I went in, but as far as Masterchef is concerned, I’ll happily continue to be an armchair viewer.

For more details on this year's courses at the Cheshire Cookery School, click here

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