Why I Chose Ireland and Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland

Hopefully, you are lucky enough to have an excellent friend who is also a great cook. I do, and her name is Carolyn Corbin. I enjoyed visiting her while she attended the Ballymaloe Cookery School. And she was gracious enough to share her experience in the following post.

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I’ve always enjoyed reading cookbooks. When I was a child, I could I sifted through my mom’s collection of well-loved Australian culinary magazines. My grandma saved family recipes in the thick, stained pages along with handwritten notes. She scribbled notes in the margins. I still love these books, and some of these treasures have found their way into my collection. A collection that required an additional bookshelf to be purchased to house them. After all, the saying rings true in our family. It’s not hoarding if it’s a cookbook.

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1. Why I Chose Ballymaloe Cookery School
2. Studying Food in Ireland
3. Ballymaloe Cookery School
4. Making Use of What I Learned
5. Slow Food for Thought

Why I Chose Ballymaloe Cookery School

Ireland is a Great Place to Learn About Food

I was raised by parents who gave me the gift of travel and shared the world with me. I know I’m lucky.  Traveling and experiencing cultures and food and meeting people from all over the globe has shaped me into the adult I have become.

As a teenager, I tried to find my place in the world. I graduated from a university that encouraged students to be engaged, curious, open-minded, and a lifelong learner. After graduation, my life took me in many directions, but I always came back to the love of food and culture. So when the opportunity arose for me to go to culinary school seemed realistic, I jumped at the chance. I toured many schools in the United States, but couldn’t quite find the right fit.

Studying Food in Ireland

Around St. Patrick’s’s Day, I happened upon a television show showcasing food in Ireland. The host toured a school named Ballymaloe. The Cookery School sits in an idyllic location along the southern coast of Ireland just outside of Cork in a picturesque town most Americans assume only exist in movies. The gardens!  The kitchens! The founding blocks of the school: organic and local, fresh and seasonal, timeless recipes that have withstood fads and the test of generations of cooks – all of these concepts resonated with me.  I had found my school, and I submitted my application in a matter of days.  I started the twelve-week certificate course six months later.

Ballymaloe Cookery School

Ballymaloe Cookery School is a dream come true.  The grounds are more beautiful in person than they even seemed to be on television.  The kitchens are more charming and welcoming.  The teachers are talented.

Then there’s the food. Students are on a rotating chore chart. Tasks include feeding the chickens, picking the salad greens from the glasshouse, and baking bread. We also made fresh butter from the cows that are milked on the farm each morning. I volunteered to pick weeds on the organic farm. My hands entrenched in the soil, watching beautiful produce grow from seedlings. I’ll never forget the smell of hundreds of vine-ripened tomatoes or planting my lettuce and eating it as it became. And how I made my fresh pasta using herbs picked outside the door of my charming cottage on the school grounds.

I ate raw brussels sprouts for breakfast on my way to the kitchens and nibbled on apples straight from the trees on my way to feed the cores to the pigs. I learned butchery– cutting whole slabs of meat in portions using a saw. Amazing. The curriculum sparked my imagination and built my confidence.

Making Use of What I Learned

As a culinary school, Ballymaloe provided me with the base to work in restaurants. However, my life took me in another direction. Today I share my knowledge with friends about preparing Thanksgiving turkey or if they should freeze their meatballs cooked or raw. I share my passion with my children in the kitchen when I show them how to tap on the bread to see if it’s’s cooked. I can still hear the headmistress, Darina Allen, in my head as I season beans. And I laugh out loud when on how to plate each dish. My memory always reverts to a beautifully poached salmon nestled in greens and flowers as if splayed out at its funeral.

Slow Food for Thought

I’m happy to know that there’s still a place where farmers are revered. And their animals are t. At Ballymaloe Cookery School, food is for so much more than nourishment, it is for the soul and is a representation of love. It’s slow food– respect for the land, the producers, and for the people who will be lucky to relish in its flavor.

My recipes from school are always an invaluable reference when I’m in the kitchen. The memories I have from those twelve weeks are so sweet—what an incredible culmination of my two passions: food and travel. The books are reminders, but they led me to one of the most amazing journeys of my life.

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