FOOD AND TRAVEL

Inspiration and Recipes from an Irish Garden

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At Ballymaloe, the Allen family inspires new generations to make soups, salads and more from what grows out back.

By Lisa Gosselin, Editorial Director, EatingWell March/April 2008

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When I ask Darina Allen—chef, cookbook author and director of the legendary Irish cooking school Ballymaloe—what the secret to great cooking is, her sky-blue eyes light up. She smiles and says brightly, “It’s really quite simple: you start with what’s coming up in the garden.”

For Allen, the “garden” can mean her family’s 400-acre estate, hotel, “cookery school” (as the Irish call it) and rolling green farmland outside of Cork. It can mean the formal rectangles of gardens hidden behind ancient hedges, some 20 feet high, where globe artichokes, fennel, rosemary and lettuces are arranged as neatly and beautifully as tulips and daffodils. It can mean the greenhouses lined with fragrant sweet peas and delicate baby arugula or the pots full of lavender, basil, rosemary and other herbs that grow near stucco walls covered in climbing roses. But in this case, Darina Allen means a small two-foot-by-ten-foot plot of earth where students are digging. It’s where the cooking lessons at Ballymaloe’s 12-week program start.

“If you teach people to grow their own food, they appreciate it more,” Allen explains matter-of-factly as she tucks a lock of blond hair behind one ear and peers at some speckled eggs in the incubator she uses to teach students to raise chickens. “They start to understand the value of eating seasonally, eating locally and organically. I try to explain that if you pick food at the right time, it should taste perfect—it shouldn’t need a lot of other flavors.”

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USER COMMENTS — Add Your Comment

What a beautiful, inspiring story. Can you tell me how I can go to that school?

Sarah Rice, Greensboro, NC

I am visiting Ireland in Mid May and would like to try eating at the hotel if offered to the public. Where is Ballymoloe? Thank you.

Sylvia Cushley, Clearwater, FL

To the women interested in going to the school, there's a link for "Visiting Ballymaloe" under Related Articles.

Anonymous, San Francisco, CA