About a year after my family started a farm, I realized I wasn’t making good use of the gorgeous vegetables we were growing. I love roasted vegetables, but that’s pretty much all I did. I took a pickling and fermentation class with Farmbelly, aka Michelle Aronson, a cooking teacher and soon to be farmer. At the beginning of class, Michelle waxed poetic about her time learning to cook at Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. I was so entranced I immediately followed the school on Instagram.

About three years later, I enrolled at Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland, for their twelve week certificate course. From September to December 2022, I lived and cooked on a 100 acre organic farm by the sea, surrounded by gardens, glasshouses, and dairy cows.

Class at Ballymaloe Cookery School

The school, founded in 1983 by Darina Allen and her chef brother Rory O’Connell, has always championed real food, real farms, and traditional Irish cooking long before farm to table became popular. We learned to use kitchen scraps to make a perfect stock, forage for seaweed along the shore, and taste the seasons directly from the garden.

I learned so many things that made me a better cook. How to make a cartouche, for instance, a little circle of parchment laid over garlic and onions so they sweat instead of burn. That one small piece of paper changed my cooking forever. I also learned how to fail properly. My soufflé collapsed spectacularly, and I had to own it. The instructors had the patience of saints. But that too was part of the education. I learned that cooking is about presence, not perfection.

Before Ballymaloe, I often rushed. I multitasked, skimmed recipes, and treated cooking like a side chore. At Ballymaloe, I had to give it my whole focus. Cooking deserved it, and I deserved it. That was the real turning point for me. I began to see the joy in paying attention to every step, to notice the way onions transform slowly in butter, or the way fresh herbs and flowers carry the garden onto the plate.

More to come

This post is a bit of an introduction to Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. I hope to write follow ups, especially about Maria Walsh, who teaches fermentation, as well as some of the recipes I learned that would lend themselves to a cheeseboard. It was only twelve weeks, but I learned more than I could have imagined.

But it wasn’t just about the cooking. It was the people, especially my housemates in Pennyworth Cottage, a group of students from all over the world, living together, laughing late into the evening over endless cups of wine, whiskey and lemsip. (I had a cold much of the time) There was always craic to be had. I made friends I hope to keep for the rest of my life. I was also inspired by my classmates, many of whom were vastly more talented than me.

Sometimes when I tell people I went to Ireland for cookery school, they ask, “What did you learn to cook? Potatoes?” I understand that reaction, because before I went I didn’t know about the revival of Irish and British cooking or Ballymaloe’s role at the heart of it. And yes, we cooked potatoes. Potatoes are awesome.

Ballymaloe did not turn me into a chef. It reminded me that I am a cook, and that is enough. It reminded me that food is culture, care, and connection. And it set me on the path I am on now, building Crumb and Rind, teaching about cheese, and sharing what I love with whoever is at the table.

Thanks a million, Ballymaloe.