Prue Leith is a lady with high standards. The most demanding judge on the Great British Menu, Prue takes to our screens in search of impeccable cooking. So it’s a good testament to the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest of Food and Wine that she is heading back to East Cork for the second year in a row.

“The only problem is this year I have to work,” laughs the lady who has dedicated a lifetime to food as a restaurateur, caterer, cookery writer and journalist.

“Last year, I was a visitor and had such a wonderful time. As well as enjoying some fantastic demos and eating really quality street food in the Big Shed in Ballymaloe, we also visited some old Irish gardens and picked clams on Ballycotton beach.”

Of course, like most Irish festivals, Prue also admitted that the weekend ended with in a big singsong in a Ballycotton pub.

This year though her schedule will be a little busier, as she will be hosting a slot discussing her culinary writing, as well as speaking to Nick Lander on her life in food. And the Financial Times restaurant critic will certainly have his work cut out for him trying to fit Prue’s years of culinary experience into one talk.

No More Cookbooks

This lady was certainly ahead of her time. She started her high-end catering business in 1960, opened a Michelin-star restaurant in 1969 and a few years later Leith’s School of Food and Wine came to fruition, where everyone from budding cooks to amateur chefs were trained.

Add in years of writing as a food journalist and over a dozen cookbooks and there is certainly a lot to talk about.

However, it’s been 20 years since Prue last wrote a recipe book – and she doesn’t plan to write one ever again. “Absolutely off the table. Everything is online these days. If you want a recipe for chocolate cake, you simply Google it. Recently, I was looking for a recipe for buckwheat bellinis that I must have written 20 years ago. I spent about half an hour going through old recipe books looking for it. Eventually, I searched online and up popped two recipes, one of which was mine.

“There are so many beautiful cookbooks these days,” she says. However, the author of Leith’s Cookery Bible believes they are changing from being practical guides to a statement of the food the author likes. “The recipes look fantastic, but many you wouldn’t cook. You might only get five recipes that you’ll throw your hand to.”

Penning Novels

Just because she won’t be bringing out another cookbook doesn’t mean she has put down the pen. Instead she will be discussing her very unique slant on food writing: her novels.

Her sixth novel The Food of Love, Laura’s Story is her latest book and is part of a trio, with the second hitting the shelves in September.

Telling the story of the Oliver and Angelotti families, it spans three generations, their loves and lives in food as cooks, restaurateurs and farmers.

Prue says: “Its goes from rationing during World War II to Heston Blumenthal and everything in between. It’s all about the food industry, farming, the rise of manufacturing and the dominance they have with our diet.

“Of course, I’m extremely interested in all these themes, but at the end of the day it also comes down to laziness,” she laughs. “Most books are somewhat autobiographical, whether the writer likes to admit it or not. It’s that age-old saying: write about what you know.

“Some of my other novels focus on adoption and again that goes back to the fact that my daughter was adopted from Cambodia and the subject matter really interests me.”

Food Porn

When Prue isn’t writing about food, she’s tasting it on the Great British Menu, on which she has been a judge since it hit our screens in 2006. While she says the show can inspire, she also believes cooking has become a spectator sport.

“This is happening more and more. Food shows are cheap television and people love to watch them, but are they cooking? On the other end of the spectrum, if we didn’t have it, would we have all these boys in cookery schools? The likes of Jamie Oliver have made it cool to cook; whereas, in my day, it was very difficult to persuade men into the kitchen.”

But what about the fact that although women are cooking in kitchens across the country, it’s men who are making it big in the cheffing world?

“To be honest, that won’t really change until men are prepared to mind the children at home, because it’s a profession with irregular hours.

“When it comes to the top chefs, quite often the marriages don’t last. It’s not a good profession for married couples. Look at the top female chefs: most are single and don’t have children. People know women can cook as well as men, but show me a man looking after the children.”

Having it All

“I was very lucky. I had my career behind me before I married. I opened my first restaurant at 29 and had that under my belt before I embarked on motherhood. If you look at my career, I had my restaurant, cookery school and catering business and then I did nothing for 10 years.

“It is a great mistake to think you can have it all, something is always going to give. It’ll be the guilt or the marriage or not making it in your profession,” she laments.

Well, one thing is for sure: Prue is an authority on many different elements of the food industry and promises to be an entertaining speaker at the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest. CL

Online

For more information on Prue Leith’s talks and to see the full line up of the weekend, visit www.litfest.ie