White-jacketed student chefs were laying out their morning's work. There were miniature twice-baked cheese souffles, lamb and spinach pate, purple onion marmalade, crunchy fennel and carrot salad, soda bread with farm butter, and lightly dressed organic greens. Not to mention fresh-squeezed lemonade and warm orange crepes with big balls of just-churned vanilla ice cream.
''This is not so much a cookery course as a whole organic experience," said Jenny Brocklebank, 33, a Londoner and former BBC producer, who was midway through the school's rigorous 12-week certificate course. Explaining that Ballymaloe raises most of its own food on 100 acres (and purchases the rest from local fishermen and farmers), she said, ''We're even tested on the names of the fresh herbs in the greenhouse."
A typical day in the residential course (some 60 students live in converted farm buildings at the school or find their own lodgings) begins with gathering greens and herbs for lunch, preparing stocks, and baking bread and desserts. Some 15 recipes will be prepared from the previous afternoon's lecture and demonstration.
During the course, students learn classic French and modern Irish cookery techniques, menu planning, wine service and storage, food preservation, food hygiene, and restaurant management. Successful completion of the course almost assures a job in any number of food-industry settings. Such training does not come cheap -- the course costs over $10,000 -- but graduates, including Bing Broderick, director of the bakery at the nonprofit Haley House Bakery Cafe in Roxbury, who was visiting his alma mater recently, swear it's worth the money.
The school was opened in 1983 by Darina Allen, the daughter-in-law of Ireland's pioneering food advocate, Myrtle Allen, who had opened the fabled Ballymaloe House restaurant in the 1960s. Located just a few miles from the school, Ballymaloe House offers the ultimate in Irish country house hospitality and cuisine. Darina Allen, 57, is an Irish cookery star, known for her cookbooks, TV series, and campaigns for sustainable agriculture.
