Darina Allen - A year at Ballymaloe
Darina Allen apologises for not answering the phone herself, she has been outside inspecting new shoots in the garden and has now run up the stairs She is full of excitement on this one of the first spring days down in the South of Ireland where she owns and runs the famous Ballymaloe Cookery school. This is a school that has in its quietly understated and unsung way trained lots of the chefs now at large in many of the better restaurants around the UK and the world.
Already a veteran of numerous cookbooks, as well as many TV appearances both here and in the US, Darina’s latest book ‘A year at Ballymaloe cookery school” is all about two subjects close to her heart – the school, which is also her home, and seasonality. “We are very seasonal here,” she confirms, “the cooking school is in the middle of an organic farm so we always cook the food that’s in season that’s around and produced on the farm and locally. We buy from our neighbours and from the boats. I know that seasonality is something everybody talks about now but we’ve been doing it forever and ever. It’s just the way it is. Well,” she laughs,” we’ve had no choice really we’re hardly in the centre of things here and its just logical to go for the freshest produce at any one time.”
The recipes in the book reflect this. There are no artfully constructed platefuls of multi-ingredients, instead each dish relies on the quality of the few ingredients involved to make it shine. As spring gathers speed who could refuse a baked trout with spinach-butter sauce? At this time of year the spinach is vibrant green and tender, and while we can’t all get our trout straight from the stream, we can still seek out fresh new season spinach at the better markets. “If you put a lot of effort into sourcing the best ingredients getting dishes to taste great is a lot easier,” she says simply.
The students that come for Darina’s courses are encouraged to look hard at the produce and its provenance, as well as meet the local producers and school gardeners straightaway. “When you meet the person who has spent twelve weeks growing a vegetable, you know that you have to respect that effort and not take it off and boil the hell out of it! “ she laughs. “The students are encouraged to grow things themselves, even if they only have a little window box back home. To get that magic feeling that comes when you see something go from seed to something edible. To wait and anticipate is to enjoy it a lot more. It gives you a whole different outlook on food and a heightened respect for the food and the people who produce the food too.”
Of course not all of us are lucky enough to live on a thriving organic farm with over an acre of greenhouses, but we can still think seasonal when cooking. Darina laughs when we talk about the folly of picking a recipe from a book and then going shopping for ingredients. “What if a key ingredient isn’t there? You’re flummoxed. Far better to see what’s in season when you go to the market and build a menu from that.” And that is where the book really shines. If you cook the recipes as intended – spring recipes from the spring section, summer from the summer and so on, then you should be able to find all you need in season and in plentiful supply.
“We like to shock our students into realising that food is not what comes wrapped in plastic from the supermarket,” Darina says but although this is not a shocking book, in fact it’s full of comforting recipes, it tries to do much the same thing. Dotted amongst the dishes are gorgeous pictures of the area around the school and shots of the many animals that have a home there. The idea of going to town to search out some out of season ingredient when there is so much seasonal richness all around appears as what is, wasteful and silly.
The book is not it has to be stressed puritan about ingredients; recipes feature aubergines, scallops, pesto, stuffed courgette flowers and all manner of treats more appropriate to a Mediterranean garden but with all those greenhouses anything is growable if done with care and passion.
If you have a vegetable garden this is a book to put fresh heart into your digging. Most importantly it’s a book that will make you cook seasonally so that you eat things at their prime of freshness and flavour. It makes you value the seasons for what they offer and not be annoyed at what they haven’t got.
Try a recipe from the book here
