CAN you name a Welsh dish other than rarebit? I couldn’t when the question arose at a Welsh cookery class I attended last month.

However my tutor, Sian Roberts, a proud ambassador of the country’s cuisine, assured me that I wasn’t alone. In fact the former BBC broadcaster recently conducted a survey, which discovered even people from Wales struggled to identify any national dishes.

“It was really quite shocking,” said Sian. The apathy towards Welsh cuisine has prompted Sian to revive the country’s traditional dishes; first she helped produce a series of cookery DVDs and now she is piloting a Welsh cookery school called Coginio in the vale of Glamorgan, which I was invited along to.

However, before we were let loose in the kitchen Sian gave us (a motley crew of Brazilian, English and Welsh foodies) a brief history lesson.

“Unlike other countries where the aristocracy has influenced the cuisine, Welsh food comes from the working classes so there are a lot of old housewives’ dishes,” she explained.

“The hilly terrain has also influenced our cuisine; in some regions the land is only suitable for grazing sheep, hence the reason why Welsh lamb is so popular.”

Wales also has a long history of dairy production (hence all the cheeses) and the country’s coastline is home to some of the finest mussels in Europe.

“About 95 per cent of them are exported to the continent,” said Sian.

“They just eat more of them there.”

There’s also the Marmite delicacy that is laverbread, a spread made from the seaweed found clinging to rocks along the Welsh coast.

“Some of you will be cooking with that later,” said Sian.

Happily, my girlfriend and I avoided any contact with laverbread and were assigned with cooking cawl (a traditional broth with lamb and veg), Welsh cakes and, you guessed it, Welsh rarebit. We were a bit gutted not to be cooking Glamorgan sausages, which confusingly had no meat in them.

The recipes weren’t particularly taxing, and while the class was suitable for novices it was perhaps a bit too simple for more confident cooks. However, the banter flowed and the Coginio staff even cleaned up after us (I wish that happened at home), which was just as well because we made a right mess making the Welsh cakes.

Once we’d all finished our dishes, we had a buffet feast washed down with a bottle or three of Welsh wine. I wasn’t so keen on the cawl, but the Glamorgan sausages were beautiful (an ideal substitute for meat) and so were the Welsh cakes, which kept us in snacks during the drive back to Bournemouth.

Want to have a go at knocking up some Welsh specialities? See the recipes below.

• Coginio’s cookery break is held at the Vale Resort, Hensol near Cardiff. For more details visit coginio.com.