FOOD AND TRAVEL

Inspiration and Recipes from an Irish Garden

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Spinach Soup

It hasn’t been this way for long. In 1948, when Myrtle Allen and her husband, Ivan, a Quaker fruit farmer, bought Ballymaloe at an auction, the country was still largely on a meat-and-potatoes diet. “It was hard to find really good fresh food in markets,” Myrtle explains, “and my husband was a farmer and gourmet so we began growing our food and preparing it ourselves or buying directly from other farmers.” To help pay the bills, the Allens began serving dinner to guests, then putting them up overnight, and the hotel was born.

Myrtle Allen managed to grow the farm and her family of six children at the same time. One son, Tim, a farmer, married one of the chefs, Darina. Together, along with Darina’s brother Rory O’Connell, they run the 25-year-old cooking school. Another Allen son, also named Rory, manages the estate and plays traditional Irish music in the elegant sitting room in the evening. Granddaughter Lydia brings pickled vegetables and marmalades to the local farmers’ market the family helped to start in 1996. Grandson Cullen launched Cully and Sully, one of Great Britain’s leading manufacturers of prepared, locally sourced meals. Another grandson, Darren, is making boilers that use woodchips as an alternative fuel source. Perhaps the best-known member of the family is Darina’s daughter-in-law Rachel Allen, the Martha Stewart of Ireland with her own TV show, line of cookbooks and cookware.

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