Cooking by the book

In my book, you can never have too many cookbooks. My collection spans three shelves of a bookcase positioned in the corner of my dining area, where the books, booklets, pamphlets and clippings can inspire culinary prowess through their mere presence.

my cookbook corner

I can’t remember when I really started collecting cookbooks, or if I ever did. They seem to simply appear over the years, sometimes as gifts, sometimes through personal purchase, sometimes via former books of my mom’s that I’ve borrowed from my dad’s kitchen and conveniently forgotten to give back. I look over them fondly, and often. To me, browsing through a cookbook holds every bit the same satisfaction as reading a great novel. I spend hours poring over them, drooling over delicious-sounding dishes that I dream of whipping up in my own kitchen. Some I make, some are destined to remain wistful imaginings.

Here are a few of the standout culinary tomes in my collection:

“The French Laundry Cookbook” by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the balls to actually attempt any of the insanely nitpicky recipes in here, but with its attention to detail and absolutely gorgeous photography, the book itself is a work of art worthy of any coffee table.

Darina Allen’s “Ballymaloe Cookery School Cookbook.” Ballymaloe is a renowned Irish culinary school, and this book is the definitive collection of recipes covered in classes there. The instructions are detailed and geared toward a student audience, making them easy to follow and offering description in great detail. My Irish in-laws have also gifted me with Darina’s “Traditional Cooking” and her daughter-in-law Rachel Allen’s “Bake” as well – welcome additions to my section on Irish cuisine.

“Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook.” Well, it was new back in 1968 when my mom bought it. For ages, this book has been one of my go-to resources for general cooking instruction. It’s definitely old-school, but many of the recipes have held up well over the years. And the big trend toward retro comfort food is only helping its cause. I use it primarily for classic cookies; the peanut butter recipe is my fave. I also own the updated 1996 version, but refer to them both equally.

Various volumes by Rachael Ray, Giada de Laurentiis and Ina Garten. Love them or hate them, those Food Network bitches do turn out some good food. Ina’s “Barefoot Contessa Family Style” and “Barefoot Contessa at Home” are the ones I use most often because her cooking style is probably most similar to my own, although I have memorized the lemon spaghetti recipe from Giada’s “Everyday Italian” and adopted it as my own.

“A Homemade Life” by Molly Wizenberg. This isn’t really a cookbook per se, it’s more a food-themed memoir with recipes interspersed, but what recipes they are! I’ve made several of the mostly vegetarian offerings, all with great results. Next up – pickled grapes. Molly also writes a column for Bon Appetit magazine, and maintains a blog called “Orangette.”

I pull out other books at random, when I need something specific, or if I’m bored and just looking for something new to make for dinner.

What’s your favorite cookbook and why? There’s always room on my shelf for something new…

Ballymaloe bliss

Last night, I got to check a major culinary goal off my bucket list. I got to eat and stay at Ballymaloe House.

Ballymaloe House inn

For those of you who’ve never heard of it, Ballymaloe is owned and operated by a woman named Darina Allen, who has created something of a culinary empire in Ireland. She runs the Ballymaloe Cookery School, has authored a whole slew of highly regarded cookbooks, and is pretty much the localvore food authority around these parts. Think Martha Stewart without the snooty attitude or jail time. Darina is a huge proponent of the Slow Food movement, and every ingredient she works with is either grown on the Ballymaloe grounds or comes from a local purveyor. Her daughter Rachel is something of a foodie celebrity in her own right as well with a set of cookbooks of her own.

Knowing my culinary aspirations and affinities, several of my in-laws have gifted me with Ballymaloe vouchers for Christmases and birthdays within the past few years, and they’ve been burning a hole in my pocket. I was thrilled when my mother-in-law said she’d mind the toddler overnight so hubby and I could sneak off for a stay at the Ballymaloe House inn. We arrived around 2 p.m. to make as much use of our baby-free time as possible.

Ballymaloe House is simply beautiful, a majestic 15^th century ivy-covered stone structure in the middle of wheat and barley fields waving in the sea breezes. Although the place is plenty busy and there are more than a few small children running around, there’s still a zen aura of tranquility about the place.

For such an upscale inn, the staff is totally laid back. When we checked in, I asked if I needed to present my gift vouchers or even ID, but they just waved me off like “Pshaw! Bring it down whenever.” Still completely professional and helpful, but extremely easy-going and friendly about answering our requests and questions.

For being so off the beaten path, Ballymaloe offers a number of on-site recreational activities — walking trails, a bird sanctuary, a pool, tennis courts, a five-hole golf course, and croquet in addition to inviting sitting rooms, a solarium and porches where you can simply take a load off and bask in the glorious sunshine. A nice touch — there are free bikes you can borrow to take a spin around the property, which we did. Hubby was so excited, he even used his to explore the surrounding area. Since I’m more a social biker, I instead spent a wonderful hour or so wading around in the heated pool. This is a perfect time of year to be here; everywhere you look, there are lush blooming flowers and herbs.

Inside, there’s a small bar and a tiny tv room. Because there are no televisions in the guest rooms, you’re forced to get out and make use of the property. This is actually pretty smart. Otherwise, we probably would have just camped out in front of some stupid movie we’ve both already seen a million times and wasted a beautiful day.

The rooms aren’t numbered; instead, each has its own specific name and personality — the Rose Room, the Blue Room, the East Room, the Bamboo Room and so on. We stayed in the River Room, which was absolutely lovely, with period furnishings, a door that opened out onto the green lawn and a bathtub long enough to lie down in. Everything was cozy and spotlessly clean.

With a couple of hours to kill before dinnertime, we decided to take a leisurely drive out to nearby Ballycotton, where we spent a very pleasant hour wandering around the spectacularly scenic cliffs, taking in the sea views of ocean waves breaking on the rocks.

The bike ride, pool time and fresh sea air served to whet our appetites and by the time 7:30 rolled around, we were starving. The standard Sunday night dinner at Ballymaloe is a buffet of cold seafood dishes, cold salads and roast meats. Normally, I’m not an all-you-can-eat fan, but I figured if you were ever going to get a good one, this had to be the place.

This was no Golden Corral, food-standing-around-sweating-all-day-under-heat-lamps kind of buffet. It was one long table laden with homey earthenware bowls and platters, each containing food that was prepared that very minute and brought out from the kitchen still cold or hot as the case might have been. It was like having Sunday dinner at your grandma’s house, provided your grandma is a certified kick-ass culinary rockstar.

The meal started with a bowl of soup for each of us – the choices being onion thyme and cabbage. You can imagine hubby’s reaction when they were recited to us. He ordered the cabbage soup just to be polite, but refused to eat any of it, filling up on bread instead. I actually found the creamy onion soup to be very mild and tasty. Sort of like garlic gets all sweet and mild when it’s roasted, the same thing was going on here.

The seafood section was kinda wasted on us, but still beautiful even just to look at. Oysters, deliciously sweet tiny steamed shrimp, langostines, smoked fish of all sorts, a whole smoked salmon, crab mayonnaise, mussels — you name it, it was here.

sumptuous seafood

The salads really showcased what Ballymaloe is all about – ingredients picked from the on-site gardens at the height of their freshness, served simply to highlight their true flavors. Gorgeous red ripe tomato salad with chopped basil; julienned cucumber, peppers and onions; herb salad with edible flowers; roasted eggplant slices; mushrooms; beets; and an intriguingly pickled shaved carrot salad that my hubby couldn’t get enough of. The only nod to Ireland’s signature item was a nicely done potato salad.

The roast meats were no slouch, either, all carved to order by an attentive young server. This was like a maximum-strength carvery. The selection included roast pork, roast beef, leg of lamb, some kind of tongue, glazed ham and turkey – with enough complementary sauces to make your head swim. The only tongue I want making its way down my throat is my husband’s, so I opted to try the roast pork with applesauce and the roast lamb with mint sauce. I also ended up bogarting hubby’s glazed ham slice. He said the turkey was very moist and yummy as well. All the meats were expertly prepared, extremely tender and full of rich flavor in spite of their simple preparations. I was somewhat put off by the fatty crunchy roast pork crackling, but once I tasted it, I was totally hooked. Turns out Emeril was right all along. Pork fat rules.

the selection of roasts

Dessert was served tableside from a traveling cart of selections, and what selections they were. The choices included a flourless chocolate cake/tart, gooseberry fool (pudding), fresh strawberries and peaches, lemon meringue, housemade strawberry ice cream, whipped cream and shortbread cookies. Mercy. My tummy was reaching its limit by this point, so I figured the lemon meringue would be the lightest option, although I did taste hubby’s chocolate cake and strawberry ice cream. Every bite was heavenly.

the decadent dessert trolley

I washed down my meal with a nice gerwurztraminer – half bottles were a nice option from the extensive wine list. Hubby enjoyed a cup of coffee at the end of his dinner and pronounced it good.

I was impressed with the table next to us, populated with a couple around our age, an older couple (grandparents?) and four small kids, the youngest of which couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 sporting a head of wild curly blond hair and a South Africa football jersey. I can only hope my son will grow to eat as well as these kids did, cleaning their plates soup and all using grown-up cutlery and everything. I made hubby hang around just so I could see their reactions when the dessert trolley rolled up.

An added thrill, we got to meet Darina Allen herself, who was in the house supervising the buffet line, bringing in fresh herbs and greenery to garnish the table, and personally greeting each group in the dining room and urging everyone to enjoy more of everything. It says a lot that this woman has created such a reputation for herself throughout Ireland and beyond, yet still manages to be so hands-on and down-to-earth. I was delighted to see her in the flesh and actually get to speak with her briefly.

All in all, for us, I’m not sure the buffet was worth the 70 euro per person price tag, but for someone who loves seafood, it would definitely be of more value. Still, it was a lovely dining experience. More than anything else, I suppose you’re paying for the Ballymaloe name and the ingredients, which were of superior quality for sure. Hubby and I agreed we’d love to return for lunch next time.

Breakfast was another high point. Our Sunday special 80-euro-per-person rate covered both bed and breakfast, which was more than fair. We slept in and arrived toward the tail end of the service, but everything looked as if it had just been brought out moments earlier. When we walked in, we were encouraged to help ourselves to the continental items: a table laden with muesli, porridge, fruit, yogurt and fresh juice; then another full of breads, butter and jams. The items included a few offbeat, grown-on-the-premises fruits such as gooseberries, rhubarb and blackberries. As expected, everything was top quality and uber fresh.

When we sat down, an older waitress came over to get our hot drink order and present us with a menu of hot items. Featured, of course, was the quintessential Irish fry plus a fish choice. Hubby went whole hog with the full Irish minus the mushrooms. Still somewhat full from last night, I modestly selected just the scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon (or rashers as they’re called here). In retrospect, not quite the picture of restraint.

the standard Irish fry at Ballymaloe

The coffee was served in a French press, which I always love, and the cream on the table was still cold in its tiny pitcher. The farm-fresh eggs were delicious. I daresay they rivaled those we’ve had in France, and those go down in my memory as the best I’ve ever tasted. Hubby didn’t eat his because they were slightly runny. I thought the waitress was going to cry when he politely told her he didn’t like them that way; she fell all over herself offering to bring him a new plateful. No matter, we were full of yummy, salty fried breakfast meat by that point. The sausage and rashers were delicious, as was the biscuity scone I enjoyed. For someone who wasn’t hungry when we came in, I still managed to clean my plate.

To sum up, Ballymaloe was excellent. If you are anywhere near the southeastern part of Ireland, I highly recommend paying a visit for as long as you can manage it.

A tale of two dinners

The night before last, hubby and I paid an inaugural visit to Paprika, the Indian restaurant in Millstreet. I keep asking the folks around these parts and no one seems to have any idea what it’s like, never having eaten there. Hubby and I decided it was up to us to bravely blaze the trail.

We made our entrance around 7 p.m. on a Thursday night and we the only diners in the joint. Could very nearly have heard crickets chirping, the place was so quiet, and no one else proceeded to come in the entire time we were there for takeaways or otherwise. Hm. Not encouraging, but we soldiered on.

The waiter was Indian, which fueled my belief that the food would actually be authentic and yummy. However, he seemed somewhat flustered by taking our order, which made me nervous. I worried about our entrée requests getting lost in translation, but hoped for the best.

The freebie poppadum was a little stale, but tasty, and came along with a trio of sauces — a tomato chutney, a herbed yogurt raita and some sort of sweetish curry thing. We ordered up a chicken tandoori tikka masala for hubby and a lamb badami korma for me, both with pilau rice, and an order of cheese naan bread. For being the only diners within a ten-mile radius, it seemed to take an inordinately long time to prepare our food. I wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad sign.

By the time the food finally arrived, I was nearly ready to gnaw my own arm off. The bread was fresh and tasty, but the cheese absent. Our entrees were mostly sauce and skimpy on the meat; the sauces were interestingly spiced but not spicy. The tikka masala was basically a creamy tomato sauce. My korma was more intriguing flavorwise — a yellow yogurt curry thickened with what tasted like ground almonds. Some veggies and a little more meat would have gone a long way to round things out. Both dishes were fine, not stellar, but fine. The meal was a little overpriced for what we got.  To be honest, Shalimar in Indianapolis would put this place to shame.

Don’t know that I’d rush right back to Paprika anytime soon, but wouldn’t be opposed to ordering some take out there at some point in the future.

I fared better last night at my sister-in-law Margaret’s 40^th birthday celebration dinner. Bandon (the town where she lives) is much bigger than Millstreet and therefore offers more dining options. The scene of the dinner was a place called Marmatiece, an upscale trendy fine-dining restaurant on the river the flows through Bandon. I’d seen the menu posted in the window during previous walks through town and was excited to see if it was actually as good as it sounded.

The party was a vivacious group of Margaret’s female family and friends, a lively crowd of 15 or so sophisticated ladies that I was honored to be a part of. In spite of our waiter who seemed a little out of sorts about serving that many ladies at once, everything seemed to come off without any major hiccups. We kicked off the evening with champagne and things rolled on from there.

The Marmatiece menu was not extensive, but the dishes all sounded delicious. Think traditional Irish ingredients given modern twists and surprising interpretations. I nibbled the complementary bread and pesto, finally settling on the daily specials for both starter and an entrée.

For my appetizer, I enjoyed an egg roll stuffed with creamy crabmeat and sautéed summer veggies. It was served with a little shallow dish of addictively sweet soy sesame dipping sauce. Although the egg roll wrapper was a little chewy, it was still yummy. The egg roll was pretty good sized, and I kept telling myself it was ok to leave some and save room for my dinner to come, but I couldn’t help myself and polished off every crumb.

About half of the table ordered the monkfish entrée, and most were disappointed when they discovered that the monkfish was really only a small garnishing section of what was actually a large salad. Not me. My perfectly cooked fresh cod was completely delicious – a huge filet that I couldn’t even finish, drenched in a rich beurre blanc sauce atop a bed of sweet peas, bacon and sautéed onion. And because this is Ireland, a few roasted baby potatoes around the edge of the plate. Excellently done.

I was so full I had to pass on dessert, although I must admit, I wasn’t blown away by the choices. The servings I saw looked lovely, especially the pear crumble served in individual French Le Creuset-style baking dishes with tiny carafes of custard sauce and whipped cream, but I wasn’t heartbroken about missing out.

Tomorrow, hubby and I are off for a sneaky romantic getaway at the Ballymaloe House inn. Several of the in-laws have given me gift certificates to use at Ballymaloe Cookery School (think an Irish Cordon Bleu culinary academy), but I couldn’t find anything on the schedule of classes that really tempted me. Fortunately, the kind folks at Ballymaloe said it was no problem to transfer the vouchers to use for accommodation and dinner at the inn, bless them. I’ve been to Ballymaloe once before with my sister-in-law for a fabulous three-course lunch, and I can’t wait to see what they’ll do for their famous weekly Sunday night buffet… stay tuned.