Nourishment for true foodie fans

Chef Darina Allen, widely regarded as the Stephanie Alexander of Ireland, was in Tassie last week promoting her new book

AS you might imagine I was a little bit excited at the offer of an interview with Darina Allen when she made a very brief visit to Tasmania a week ago.

Or perhaps you can’t imagine any such thing, and have greeted that first sentence with the same blank look that most did when I enthused to them about the opportunity.

The exceptions were my friend, cook Judith Sweet, and manager of Fullers Bookshop, Catherine Schulz, who knew exactly of whom I spoke — and shared my fandom.

To the others, the easiest explanation was that Darina Allen was the Stephanie Alexander of Ireland, here to promote her 16th book Grow

Cook Nourish (Simon & Schuster $59.99).

She is the middle generation of three talented cooks called Allen, none of whom started off with that name.

The first is Myrtle Hill, who married vegetable farmer Ivan Allen. They bought a farm and house called Ballymaloe, near Cork in Southern Ireland. When times got tough in 1964 Myrtle, the 40-year-old mother of six opened a restaurant at the farm.

Now, Myrtle Allen is credited with being “the big bang” of the rebirth of Irish cuisine.

Not long later, Darina O’Connell was deciding on a career at her school run by visionary Dominican nuns “who encouraged us girls to have a proper career”. And Darina’s interests in cooking and growing were not considered proper enough.

So she undertook a course in hotel management that included cooking.

“Then one of the senior lecturers said she had been at a dinner party where they were talking about a woman who has opened a restaurant in her own house right out in the country on a farm, and she writes the menu according to what is in the garden and what fish come in, and they have a Jersey cow and make their own ice cream and she uses lots of fresh herbs. I could not believe my ears.”

Having found out the name Ballymaloe she “came down and leapt in” and met and married Myrtle’s son Tim.

The young couple moved to a farm nearby where Tim grew apples and mushrooms and had four acres of greenhouses and they raised four children.

But in the 70s, wages started to rise, there was 25 per cent inflation, oil prices went up and oil was used to heat the greenhouses.

And one day Tim came home from delivering apples to a supermarket “always desperate to find a reason not to pay what they had said they would pay” and said “if I have to crawl on my knees, I am never doing that again”.

“We were in danger of losing the roof over our heads and had to look at what talents and resources we had,” said Darina, who had been helping Myrtle give cooking lessons during the winter.

She took herself off to the local bank manager to borrow 18,000 pounds.

“I told him about this fantastic idea I had to open a cooking school in a converted piggery out in Shanagarry,” she said. “He was so nice, gave me tea and biscuits, and the more I talked the more relaxed he became.”

Ultimately, the bank manager said no. The older generation went guarantor for the young couple at another bank and the school got going in 1983.

“People would come from Cork in their BMWs and Mercedes and I would hide our rusty Renault around the back,” she said.

Years later, Darina met the original bank manager again and asked why she had been turned down when he seemed so enthusiastic. “I felt I needed to save you from yourself,” he told her.

He missed out on many more loans as the business grew and grew. Now, students come from all over the world. There are at least 55 employees, three, 12-week residential courses a year, cooking demonstrations, oneday courses and the gardens are open to the public.

Tim still is in charge of growing things (only one acre of greenhouses now), there is a dairy and chooks.

One student was Rachel, who married Darina and Tim’s son Isaac. Now she teaches at the school, writes cookbooks and cooks on TV.

Having backgrounded Darina Allen, I am left with no space to talk about the book she was here to promote, but I will next week.