Rory O’Connell
Getting ready for another Simply Delicious Christmas special, the popular chef tells Darragh McManus what’s in store
“We all love turkey and ham – I do myself – but Christmas goes on for five or six days for a lot of people,” says the Ballymaloe Cookery School cofounder. “And there comes a point where we think, can we shake it up a little bit?” That’s precisely what he sets out to do in A Simply Delicious Christmas, a two-part show on RTÉ the week before Christmas. In the first episode, Rory, who is an old hand at cooking shows, flies solo and is joined by his sister (and Ballymaloe co-founder) Darina, in the second.
He explains that the siblings will be preparing “some lovely little bites to have with drinks, that sort of thing,” while in the first episode he will be showing recipes for what he calls “slightly alternative Christmas food, not the traditional thing, in other words.”
For instance, he’s doing a cauliflower and coriander soup with spicy tomato oil: “not particularly Christmassy”, Rory admits, “but on the other hand it’s delicious.
“And you can have the soup and spicy tomato oil made ahead, so it’s one of those things where people can get organised in plenty of time. I also do a rustic turkey, spinach and Swiss chard tart, which you can make on St Stephen’s Day with some of the leftover turkey.”
He loves Christmas, especially “the traditional bits of it – there are so many memories tied up in it. And I like the social aspects; Christmas is good in that it makes us meet up with family and old friends more. Those things are important. It’s very easy to slip past people and not keep in touch with them.
“I certainly think I don’t need any more presents! I can take or leave that side. I don’t need any more stuff, thank you very much. Give me a plant I can put in the ground, or a tree or something, then I’m happy. Or don’t give me anything, that’s fine too.”
Food, naturally, is central to his festive season. Indeed this applies, as Rory says, “wherever and whenever people gather: there’s going to be food. You can make something delicious, and it doesn’t need to be complicated. That really adds to the sense of happiness.”
He says that Christmas doesn’t feel like a busman’s holiday at all. He enjoys cooking, whether professionally or for friends or family. He adds, “The craft of it appeals to me and ticks whatever boxes inside make me happy. There’s almost a meditative quality to it for me too.”
Rory is best known for the TV series How To Cook Well and its spin-off books. However, he didn’t always want to be a chef. “I sort of fell into it by accident,” he says. “I’d been studying law and flunked out of that, and was faffing around for a few years. Then I got the opportunity to go into the kitchen at Ballymaloe, with no professional aspirations whatsoever. But within a few weeks, I knew that this was something I could do, and really liked doing. It was a fortuitous accident.
“I’d been bitten by the bug. There’s a great sense of satisfaction in that: when you cook, you know whether your work has been a success within a few hours. At one stage, I qualified as an interior decorator, and the process there can be six months or a year long. Cooking is very immediate and giving pleasure to people with food is a bit of a drug. There’s also the whole tactile thing of cooking.”
His day-to-day job, at the world-famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, mainly involves teaching aspiring chefs and gourmets. As he points out, that work made the move into TV shows quite a smooth one. “When
you’re teaching, you’re standing up in front of 60, 70, 80 people every day, so in many ways, doing television isn’t all that different. You’re projecting a message, getting across the important points of teaching a particular dish. I love teaching as much as I love doing the television work.
“The TV shows aren’t scripted, they’re done completely on the hoof. It could be a bit stilted otherwise. Also, because it’s related to my other work, those words are in my head anyway. It’s not like I’m speaking a new language when I stand up in front of a TV camera. I don’t want to take on a new persona when I do a show, but just be myself.”
As an added bonus, he gets to film in his own kitchen. “For me, it’s ideal,” Rory adds. “It’s lovely. I get set up, the crew gets set up, and then we all taste the food after it’s cooked. There’s a really nice atmosphere and a great crew.
“It keeps everything fresh, doing different sorts of jobs. I’m lucky: food is my thing, I love cooking, but my day-to-day work is quite varied, involving a lot of different things, all related to food: cooking, growing, production.” On that last point, Rory is passionate about food on the macro level, about knowing where it comes from: the gardener, the farmer or the fisherman involved. “I love to know the stories of the people who grow the vegetables or rear the animals,” he says, “or where a particular orange came from, and why one from Sicily is different to one from Andalusia. We must never forget, or take for granted, that without those people, we don’t have food.” He grew up in the small Co Laois village of Cullahill. The family ran “a general merchant store, and were totally reliant financially on the local farming community. We were surrounded by farms and farmers, and from an early age I knew the hardships, the pleasures and the economics of that life. “That keeps you connected to the food as a cook. Sometimes it’s perceived that people like us, on TV, see everything through rose-tinted glasses – well, I don’t. I remember when farmers had muck up to their back door and were eking out a subsistence living.”
He’s also involved in the food production operation at Ballymaloe. They have a 100-acre organic farm, with many different crops harvested throughout the year: from peaches, nectarines and apricots to potatoes, onions and Jerusalem artichokes.
“The exotic to a bit more mundane,” Rory adds. “We’re very focused on growing as much of our own food as we can. It’s a great help, when cooking, to have that connection to the source of food.
“Irish people are getting better at knowing where their food comes from; environmental issues are very topical at the moment. What route did the food take to get here? Is that route sustainable? Are there more crops we can grow in Ireland, so we’d import less? There shouldn’t be a bulb of garlic imported into Ireland, or an onion or a chilli. We have an incredible growing climate and such a long season; we should try to grow as much as we can.”
You can make something delicious, and it doesn’t need to be complicated. That really adds to the sense of happiness