Ballymaloe Cookery School and Ballymaloe House

by Linda Hopkins

Ballymaloe Cookery School, Organic Farm & Gardens in East Cork is a magical place to go for an afternoon cookery class, a weekend cooking course, or a three-month professional course.

Additionally, if you want a complete experience – you must stay at the Ballymaloe House, their hotel just 2 miles down the road. Myrtle Allen is the matriarch of the hotel and of the elegant dining room, The Yeats Room, where wonderful simple, classic food is served. Such as elegant salads, super fresh fish and shellfish, outstanding roast meats and smoked fish, and divine farm-fresh vegetables.

Myrtle Allen (born 1924, Tivoli, Cork, County Cork) is “as important to her country’s cuisine as Alice Waters was to America’s.”

In 1943, Myrtle Hill married Ivan Allen, who was working at the 400-acre farm, Kinoith, in Shanagarry. In 1947, the couple bought Ballymaloe House and the surrounding farm and raised their six children there. Ivan managed the fruit and vegetable farm and worked on Kinoith, while Myrtle took care of the children and the massive house. Later, in 1958, Ivan Allen inherited Kinoith from Wilson Strangman, the deceased owner.

Myrtle had an abundance of fresh products in her kitchen. Under the guidance of Ivan, an avid gourmet, she learned to cook by taking cookery classes in the College of Commerce (designed by her famed architect father) in nearby Cork and by self-training with her ever-growing collection of cookery books.

In 1964, Myrtle decided to start a restaurant in her own dining room she named The Yeats Room. Her philosophy of using local fresh ingredients and changing her menu daily to reflect the best offerings of the day and of the season was completely revolutionary at the time.

Later, because of new liquor laws, she converted ten of the unused rooms in the home into rooms for a guesthouse, which grew into the hotel Ballymaloe House is today.

By the 1970’s she and her sous-chef, Darina O’Connell, started giving courses in cooking. In 1983, Darina, by then married Myrtle’s son Tim Allen, and her brother, Rory O’Connell, moved the cookery classes to Kinoith and co-founded Ballymaloe Cookery School. Darina Allen is now a well-known celebrity chef, cookery book author, and pioneer in Ireland of the slow food movement.

If you want to be truly inspired and become as in awe of this place and these people as I am, go to THIS PAGE and watch the “Myrtle Allen A Life In Food” video. You will learn so much more than I can share about Ballymaloe and learn how and why it is the unique and fascinating place that it is.

In the week to come, I will share a scant few of the eighteen (18!!!) recipes that we made during the full-day cooking class at Ballymaloe Cookery School and more stories about our two-day stay at magical Ballymaloe House.