Have I talked at all about Ballymaloe House, where this all started 60 years ago?
Baile ui Maolluaigh: The Homestead of Maloo, or Mo-lua.1
The House, as it is often referred to here, is a lovely country house hotel a few klicks down the road from the School. It is on the site - and there are few bits left here and there - of a 15th c. “castle” built by the fizzily named Richard FitzMaurice FitzGerald.2 By the 16th c. the then-current Fitz Fitz (had to be referred to as “The Queen’s FitzEdmond” because there was yet another FitzEdmund nearby who was a leader of the Desmond Rebellions, which - surprise! - was against the extension of British rule in the area.
So, loyalists? It sounds like the crushing of the Desmond Rebellions was a particularly nasty affair, Fitz on Fitz, and while it was mostly about we like our own lords t’anks very much, there was apparently some Catholic v. Protestant vibe as well. A generation later, a rebellious daughter-in-law and her son backed the Irish in another uprising and promptly lost the property to some other loyalist.
Here’s the thing about Irish history: it is fascinating, but after the Brits arrived in the 12th c. things get increasingly bad for the locals and from about the 16th c. on it is just one failed rebellion after another. Until the 20th c. that is, when the shit really hits the fan and you get partition and Troubles and so on. Cork, in fact, is known as the Rebel County and was the most violent county on the island during the War of Independence - which is when Northern Ireland comes into existence. Then there was yet another civil war, the one that didn’t go so well for that hottie Liam Neeson I mean Michael Collins3 and then we pretty much get this Ireland.
Aber ich wende von theme ab.4 I have forgotten how much fun it is to write super-essentialized vaguely tipsy-sounding historical summaries!
Back to this little corner of Cork, things get pretty vague re: Ballymaloe from about 1700 on, other than the property passes through a few owners, the original structure was mostly demolished in the mid-19th c., and the building starts to take the shape we know today.
In the late 1940s, Ivan and Myrtle Allen buy the farm and raise a bunch of kids and cows and pigs and veg and fruit and generally create a bucolic little paradise.
By the 1960s, Myrtle is all, what shall I do when the children are grown and we’re rattling around this place? I know, I’ll open a restaurant! Famous last words, right? Actually, yes! She had the radical idea that she could serve good food made from local ingredients and that people would eat it. And so, farm-to-table, a phrase I am already tired of but in this case entirely accurate, was born.
Because of course, she was right - if you start with the good stuff, you are already ahead of the game. The place was a massive success, and attracted a free-thinking female cook who apparently couldn’t get a foot in the door of those manly kitchens anywhere else in Ireland. Darina O’Connell blew into the scene as a sous shortly after the restaurant opened, married one of the Allen boys (Tim) and by the early 1980s, along with her brother, chef Rory O’Connell, they’d all started this organic farm and cooking school. Forty years later, the school is so famous in Ireland that my man Scott at the Avis Rent-A-Car in Cork airport knew exactly what I was doing when I said the car and I were in Shanagarry, as does basically everyone else in the greater UK. “At the cookery school, are you? How is it going?”
So when Ballymaloe decides to throw a food festival to celebrate 60 years of excellence and an immeasurable impact on the Irish and European culinary scene, you know it’s going to be good. I mean, that is an impressive achievement in a country that most Americans associate with potatoes. But it is a reputation hard-earned and well-deserved. These people work their tails off and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I feel healthier and look better than I have in ages, after eating here for a few weeks. (Albeit, maybe a pound or 12 heavier because there is bread fucking everywhere around here and it all just really a vehicle for butter IMO).
The festival involved excellent food trucks, high-quality vendors, demonstrations and pop-up meals from a whole bunch of chefs I’ve never heard from but everyone else was pretty excited about, and generally everything and anything related to high-quality Irish food and drink. On Friday night most of us went to the collab dinner between Lee and Kate Tiernan of FKABMA in London, and Fingal Ferguson, the guru behind Gubeen charcuterie and cheese and super funky knives.5 And Pascal from Le Caveau was pourin’ some fine wines.
So that looks pretty cool, right? It was also, shall we say, rather FESTIVE for some of my housemates.
The next day I volunteered to help out in the quaintly named Drinks Theatre (or T’earter, if you are Irish) which hosted all manner of panels and tastings about Irish beverages hard and soft. Colm McCann, the delightful man who teaches us about wine, and his lovely funny and obviously running the show wife Aoife (Ee-fa) were in charge of this barn, which had events ranging from pints to wine also ciders, whiskey, cocktails, bubbles, and low- and no-alcohol bevs. I listened to some nice men with very heavy accents talk about their orchards and organic production and tasted all manner of pear and apple things that ranged from ooooh sweet to wow that’s like a good sherry to jaysus that packs a punch. I also helped on a sort of chat with Dónal Gallagher, brother of the late rock guitarist Rory Gallagher, and also a wine enthusiast so some nice wines were poured while he told stories of boozin’ times in rock and roll. There were also some other random food/music people including the wine and spirits writer for the Irish Times, John Wilson who was having a whiskey named after him so we toasted Ballymaloe’s 60th with that too. Whatever, it all worked, it’s a festival so the schedule is relaxed and as Colm always asks in class, are we happy ? Yes, yes, we are.
I did my bit for the local economy by dropping a lot of dough on things like seaweed foot scrub and an Irish Scamorza6 and some really fine chocolate from Dublin and some really fine whiskey because it was on sale and some nice vermouth because it is in an absolutely beautiful bottle and well you get the idea.
So that was most of the weekend. I’m calling this one, because I have SO MUCH to report about this week and am also due in the bread shed in 27 minutes and have to make stock at 8 and then cook all morning with Zaer and try to keep up with the goings-on at H.7 But for now . . . LFG PWHL Boston!
Much of this is lifted - I’m saying that explicitly so this is not plagiarism you conservative fucks - from various websites and Wikipedia pages because work with what you’ve got. https://www.ballymaloe.ie/content/history-ballymaloe
Yes, I know fitz refers to son. But fitz fitz is really putting it on, don’t you think?
Come on, you’ve seen that movie.
But I digress. One of the few complete German phrases I can remember, largely because my mother’s friend Maxine would toss it out upon occasion.
I spent most of the weekend referring to him as Fergus Fingalson but everyone knew who I was talking about.
Scamorza is like a dense, salty, mozzarella and this one had been smoked. I am advised to grill it like haloumi, stay tuned.
Today is Commencement. I am sorry to be missing it, and also thinking of my friends and colleagues who I think are going to have a very hard day today. Here’s hoping it is as celebratory as always of student achievement.
Nice job repping HOCR and PWHL!
You're killing me Smalls.