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There is a gentle nature to Rory O’Connell; calm and relaxed. We really can’t envisage him having a screaming match in a heated kitchen.
Gordon Ramsey simply doesn’t seem his style. He does hint to having a cranky style though, as we chat over a cup of “builder’s tea”, and the only person who seems to put him back in his box is his sister Darina Allen.
“Oh, she will say: ‘Rory, cop on.’ She is able to tell me if I am being a pain in the neck and I tell her if she is being a pain in the neck, and very few people can say that to Darina,” he laughs.
“Honestly though, we don’t argue often, we adore each other. There is a great mutual respect, and that makes things so easy.”
Cook Well, Eat Well
In fact, when it comes to his newest cookery book, Cook Well, Eat Well, Darina has been his greatest ambassador.
“She embarrasses the hell out of me, going around saying: ‘Rory has a new book out,’” but again, laughing, we suspect he loves it really.
It’s certainly a book to be shouting about because at the end of 2017, Cook Well, Eat Well was named cookbook of the year at the prestigious Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.
Rory O' Connell, Snugborough, Ballybraher, Ballycotton, Co Cork. \ Donal O' Leary
The format that Rory adopted in his book is quite unique; a collection of recipes that are structured together into separate dinner parties for readers to host.
How does potted shrimp with chilli, garlic and coriander sound?
Follow it up with roast leg of spring lamb with mint hollandaise sauce, a tangle of spring vegetables and boiled new potatoes and then the sweet touch, Sicilian Cassata, Rory’s interpretation of a traditional Sicilian sponge cake.
“My background in is restaurants and working in the kitchen in Ballymaloe House. I would have written the menu every day based on what was in the garden and local.
"So I am used to writing a menu and balancing it but it can be a challenge for people. In fact, it was my younger sister that came up with the idea.
"She enjoys cooking but doesn’t do it professionally and she kept asking me for advice when having people over.”
Dinner Party
It is such a simple idea, you wonder why more chefs don’t follow that format.
“I know not to put cream and butter in all three courses for example, but lots don’t and because so many people cook much less, the idea of a three-course meal or even a two-course meal can be quite daunting.”
This is also why Rory’s recipes tend to run over two or three pages.
“If you look at the original Ballymaloe Cookbook, recipes might have only been a few lines. Mrs Allen would have assumed – and quite correctly so – a certain level of knowledge.
"People don’t have that anymore. So now, instead of writing, ‘sweat the onions’, it might read: ‘Heat a pan over a medium heat, melt the butter, add the diced onion, cover with a paper wrapper, put a lid on and leave on low heat.’
"A lot of the knowledge has disappeared and I have to fill in the gaps but people respond to that detail and really appreciate it.”
Paper Pressure
Certainly, when any chef puts a cookbook on the shelf, it comes with a certain amount of pressure. For Rory though, that pressure is even more intense as he follows stalwarts of Ballymaloe cookbooks that have been treasured for generations.
“We are very supportive of each other. For example, Rachel Allen was nominated in the same category as me in the Bord Gáis Energy book awards.
"She was delighted when I won, the same way that I would have been delighted if she’d won. I know it can sound a bit twee from the outside that we all work together every day, but it works.
"Sometimes we sit down and have lunch together, other days we are too busy, that’s our lives.”
As an O’Connell, Rory is that little bit removed from the situation.
“I am hugely involved and associated with Ballymaloe but I am not directly one of the family.
"Now if Mrs Allen was sitting here, she would say:'Rory, of course you are one of the family,' which is really lovely but I am slightly peripheral which is good. I am able to cast a different sort of eye.”
Cookery School
Rory certainly brought his unique touch to the cookery school, which, over the last 35 years, has established itself nationally and internationally as a lifetime ambition for so many chefs and foodies. Students arrive to Ballymaloe for three months and become utterly immersed in the experience.
“It is a massive investment personally, professionally, financially and we don’t take that for granted.
“So much is outside of our control. Of course, so much is in our control in regards to course content and the likes but there are also so many factors that just sort of fell into place.
"We are in a beautiful part of the world with incredibly fertile land, right beside the sea.
"People can go to top cookery schools in New York, for example, and they can talk about fantastic milk produced upstate but there is a disconnect. In Ballymaloe, when we say we have great milk, students can see the cows in the field and there is Eileen bringing in the milk.
“It sounds so idyllic and tinged with frosted glass but it’s not, its reality.
They see the farm manager, the vegetables being picked from the ground, the reality of the situation. They also get involved themselves and as part of the course, they all plant and sow something, get their hands into the soil.
"I really think there is some charge that happens with the energy in the soil. Now a lot of farmers who are doing it every day might think we are over romanticising it but when someone does it for the first time, it can be quite a powerful experience.”
The cookery school has also had a powerful effect on Rory. He admits to being a bit lost in life when he arrived to Ballymaloe all those years ago, but in the school he became a teacher.
“I think in any successful kitchen, the head chef invariably has to be a good teacher because you have to be passing on that information and training your staff constantly.
"However, when you are explaining something and you hear a gasp as something clicks into place for a student, well, that is pure magic.”
Ballymaloe Litfest
As if Rory isn’t busy enough, another venture that he undertook five years ago with Darina was the Ballymaloe Litfest, a food and drinks literacy festival which has attracted top chefs and food writers from across the world.
In 2018, however, they are taking a break. As it has gathered momentum with each passing year, we ask Rory about this decision.
“It was just time for us to stop and breathe. There are millions of food festivals, not that there are many like the one we do, but we want it to continue to be really worthwhile.
"Each year we try to make it better, create great memories, get people who wouldn’t normally visit Ireland for food to come and enjoy it.
“However, it is an awful lot of work, so we wanted to step back, reflect and think what’s next. We have been really fortunate to have a top-class lineup of national and international guests and we want to keep it at that level.
“The plan quite definitely is to bring it back in 2019. Now what it is or how it will look, or if it’ll the exact same or different, we are still working out. Is there a possibility it will go biennial?
"Possibly, that may be a more realistic option for us, we’ll see, it depends what it looks like.”
The Year Ahead
So without Litfest, what does 2018 hold for Rory?
“I’m looking forward to the penny dropping about the next phase of Litfest. I’ve so many different ideas and I’m waiting for that to crystallise. It better crystalise,” he jokes.
“I’ll be making another TV series for RTÉ and maybe doing a bit of radio. I also want to fulfil my dream to go to Cheltenham. I went to Royal Ascot last year and it was fantastic. I read the racing pages every day and love them”.
Really, the man is quite simply full of surprises.
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