Irish Traditional Cooking teaches the forgotten skills of cooking.
If you think you’ve eaten real Irish soda bread, you probably haven’t. So says Darina Allen, queen of Irish cooking. “Real Irish soda bread doesn’t have any sugar or caraway seeds in it,” she said, “That’s the emigrant version.” She ought to know. Her dominion is the world-class Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, County Cork, but her pupils are scattered the world over. If they haven’t been initiated into fine Irish cooking under her personal tutelage, they have learned what she calls “the forgotten skills of cooking” by virtue of her knowledgable books (her last one, Irish Traditional Cooking, when re-issued two years ago, had already sold over 250,000 copies).
Reigning from a 100-acre farm, she has worked the land; raised animals to butcher, cure, and smoke; kept bees, and made cheese from her own herds long before farm-to-table became trendy. She has taught what she calls “the forgotten skills of cooking” to generations of students who have long since forgotten how to make butter or forage for wild food. In the process, she has taught them that Irish food is indeed good, very, very good. It is, as any cook worth their salt will tell you, all about the ingredients.
Darina Allen talking about Irish food to the Culinary Historians of New York and Les Dames D’Escoffier at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Photo: Nathan Hoyt
The new book, chronicling three decades at Ballymaloe, with sections on foraging, game, and sustainable fishing.
This past weekend, on the cusp of St. Patrick’s Day, Darina Allen arrived in New York City to teach Americans how to make real Irish soda bread. The occasion was a delicious Slow Food-style Irish feast at the Auden at the Ritz Carlton Hotel featuring dishes from her new book, 30 Years at Ballymaloe (Kyle Books, 2014), launched to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the storied school.
It so happens that I adore Irish soda bread (aka cake bread)—I couldn’t wait to watch her make it. By her account, it is a light and flakey quick bread made with buttermilk, tasting much like the biscuits of the American south (you can watch her make it here).
A lesson in Irish soda bread. “The first thing is, take off your diamonds.” | Photo: Nathan Hoyt
The woman America dubs “the Julia Child of Ireland” was elbows-deep in flour and buttermilk in the middle of the dining room, waxing lyrical about Ireland’s superb butter—imperative for spreading on the baked soda bread. “In Ireland we can grow grass like nowhere else in the world,” she said. “So we have fantastic butter, lovely cream and of course cheese….Grass-fed gives more flavor and more complex nutrients.” This is because Ireland, where local farming is still prevalent, is one of the few meat- and dairy-producing countries left where meat is not factory farmed, and dairy herds roam fee.
Darina delivering the hot soda bread from oven to table and making certain the butter for this course is salted, the way it’s done in Ireland. | Photo: Nathan Hoyt
A neighbor told me that his wife loves St. Patrick’s Day, but he loves St. Joseph’s Day, on March 19, when you pinch the ear of anyone named Joseph and eat cake filled with cream or cannoli filling. I had never even heard of this holiday! …Do you know it? He said it was Italian…
Yes, March 19 is St. Joseph’s Day in Italy, when everyone named Joseph is honored along with the saint, and people eat fritters (zeppole) or other fried pastries filled with sweetened ricotta or pastry cream and candied fruit. About the ear-pinching, that’s news to me!
Puttin’ on the Ritz for Darina Allen on St. Patrick’s Day at the Ritz Carlton, with Jane (Tierney) Milza, former long-time food editor at the Staten Island Advance. In the background, Susan O’Rourke of Cooking by the Book.
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Thank you for this delightful story about Darina Allen. She is a living treasure. Wish I could’ve been there to soak up her captivating enthusiasm for cooking and for life in general. The video showing her make Irish Soda Bread is utterly joyful.
I wish you had been there, too. I just received your wonderful new book yesterday, The French Cook: On Souffles. So well-written, classic. I can’t wait to jump into it. In bocca al lupo!
Her recipe for soda bread is the one I always use…it’s fabulous! My husband is called Joe and now I will have to remember to pinch his ear! Have been reading about Darina for years and I want that butter! Don’t you just love the soda bread with cheese, amazing!
Yes, you must pinch his ear (it’s a custom, more on that in a later post!). Darina also made the soda bread with her own cheddar, which is divine!