The Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland, is one of the only cooking schools in the world with its own 100-acre, certified organic farm.
Ballymaloe graduate Darby Tarantino uses that sprawling, verdant garden as inspiration each March when she creates an authentic St. Patricks Day luncheon at the tasting room of Meadowcroft Wines in Sonoma, where she serves as the resident chef and wine educator.
Unlike the faux-Irish feast of corned beef and cabbage, which is more Manhattan Island than Emerald Isle, her farm-to-table feast conjures up all of the sweet root vegetables and crisp spring bounty of Ballymaloe, a Gaelic word that means the townland of sweet honey.
When they think of Irish food, people always think of meat and potatoes, said Tarantino, whose ancestors fled County Cork during the potato famine. But at Ballymaloe Cookery School, theyve realized that Ireland is more than that. Its surrounded by ocean, and its founder, Darina Allen, is responsible for all kinds of farmers markets all over the country.
Tarantino, who grew up in Santa Rosa and now lives in Penngrove, made her first trip to Ireland in 2000, then returned every year until 2007, when she decided to leave her job in escrow to enroll at Ballymaloe and reinvent herself as a food and wine maven.
I fell in love with the country, so I started going back every year, she said. Ireland was calling me home. Whenever I land at the airport there, I have a feeling of being home.
In 2007, the Celtic Tiger economic engine was still roaring when she started classes at Ballymaloe, which opened its doors in 1983 and has been teaching students the secrets of authentic Irish cooking ever since.
Everything we cooked came from the organic farm, she said. We made our own cheese, and even milked the cows.
During the first week, Allen taught the students how to make a proper Irish soda bread, a simple, unleavened loaf made with flour, buttermilk, baking soda and salt.
She taught us how to get the right texture, and how to tell if it is done, Tarantino recalled. You have to have just the right amount of buttermilk and when you tap the bottom, you should hear a hollow sound.
Source: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/3584983-181/a-st-patricks-day-lunch
