Summer Cooking Classes at Ballymaloe Cookery School

The Ballymaloe Cookery School Farm and Gardens are bursting with wonderful fruit and vegetables - it is a joyous time of the year to cook. 

We are looking forward to offering some afternoon classes later this summer with limited numbers following all Government guidelines.

First up on Friday, 23rd July will be Summer Cooking with Rory O' Connell. 

Rory will be using the best of the season's produce along with lots of herbs and edible flowers.

Rory will grill Mackerel and serve with a Nasturtium Leaf and Flower Butter, Peppery Courgette Carpaccio with Rocket Leaves and Parmesan will pair beautifully with this.

For main course, how about a Roast Chicken Salad with French Beans and Tarragon, served with New Potatoes and Roast Aubergines, Ricotta and Mint.

Peaches will be made into an ice and popsicles served with a compote of Cherries and Pistachio Nougatine. Strawberries will be stuffed with Lemon Basil and Peppermint Leaves will be dipped into chocolate and served iced from the freezer.

Then on Friday 30th July, come and join Rachel Allen for inspiration and fun, she will share recipes and tips for a memorable Summer Evening Dinner Party at home with friends.

On Friday 6th August, come join me for a summer foraging adventure. Foraged foods from local woods, fields, hedgerows and seashore have been an integral part of the menu at Ballymaloe House for over forty years, several decades before the current trend for foraging emerged.

I will take you for a walk in the countryside in search of wild and foraged foods. You’ll be amazed at what can be found even within walking distance. You’ll learn how to identify and use over forty seasonal wild food plants, flowers, as well as many foraged foods from the hedgerows. Free ingredients, fresher and tastier and often more nutritious than almost anything you will find in the shops. A walk in the countryside will never be the same again. Where you previously saw weeds, you’ll now see dinner! This course is suitable for chefs, professional foragers or for anyone with an interest in foraging for pleasure.

Then on Friday August 20th, Rachel shares an amazing afternoon of terrific tarts to wow your friends - sweet and savory.

And if you've more time and want to dive deeper on your culinary adventures, we also have our 5 week cookery course starting on July 12th.

For more information and to book, see the Ballymaloe Cookery School website or telephone 021 4646 785

Summer Berry Heaven

Beautiful apricots, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries piled up onto the greengrocers shelves. The blackcurrants and redcurrants are also beginning to ripen in our Currant and Berry garden. The abundance of fruits makes our hearts sing and helps us to forget our woes and count our blessings.

Mother Nature sweetly cheering us up…My grandchildren are in their element crawling in under the netting on the fruit cage to steal the ripest strawberries – sweet, juicy berries, often half the size of the perfect commercial fruit but intensely flavoured from all that delicious sunshine. Can’t wait to drizzle them with a slick of thick yellow Jersey cream and a sprinkling of caster sugar, that’s all the first of the new seasons organic strawberries need but as they become more abundant, I start to search for other delicious ways to enjoy them. One of the simplest is to add shredded mint leaves, a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkling of caster sugar or honey.

Jane Grigson’s Fruit book published in 1982 is a classic, one of my favourite cookbooks of all time. It’s an alphabetical guide to fruit from the apple onwards. It was out of print for a while but is now available again. If you don’t have it, try to source an original – they are a collector’s item. Jane’s beautiful prose and immense knowledge of the history of each fruit makes it bedtime reading…maybe not everyone idea but I find myself licking my lips and longing to get into the kitchen to try some of her suggestions.

Bushby’s Rosscarbery Strawberry Farm (023) 883 8140) and Rose Cottage Fruit Farm in Co. Laois grow a large selection of fruit. Look out for loganberries and tayberries at local Farmers Markets and the Wexford strawberries are along the roadside right up as far as the Midlands.

 

Don’t forget to use lots of fresh herbs with fruit of course elderflower with gooseberries but it’s also delicious added to syrup to poach other stone fruit, peaches, pears and nectarines. The Ballymaloe sweet geranium is another must have to add a magical haunting lemony flavour to so many dishes.

A glut of fruit is an opportunity to make a few pots of jam. Strawberries are low in pectin, the substance that helps with gelling. Jam made with commercial strawberries that are constantly irrigated seem to be even more difficult to set. Some people use jam sugar which I’ve never been fond of partly because the jam can easily end up the texture of ‘bought jam’ so what’s the point of making your own. I recently discovered that jam sugar also has hydrogenated palm oil which I try to avoid at all costs. However don’t fret, fruits that are low in pectin like the aforementioned strawberries can be combined with fruits with high pectin e.g. redcurrants which by a happy coincidence of nature both are in season at the same time. We’ve had a brilliant crop of red, white and black currants. The latter won’t be ready for a few weeks.

Look out for wild strawberries too, divinely sweet. We’ve also got a patch of wild raspberries, watch out for them around the country and soon there will be blueberries…