I am reading with much interest Caroline from Bibliocook’s adventure as she does the Darina Allen course in Ballymaloe Cookery School.
I have the utmost respect for Darina and her teaching methods, I have taken on several chefs over the years who have been trained by her and found the training to be very sound.
At the Slow Food , Terre Madre last year in Turin there was a symposium for the 1,500 odd chefs present. One of the first to speak was Darina who gave a simple account of the way she trained her students, by picking their own vegetables, plucking the eggs from the hens and collecting the fish directly from the boats in Ballycotton.
One of the later speakers was Alice Waters from Chez Pannisse in California, a lady who has had as much of an effect on American cooking as Myrtle Allen has here.
Ms Waters prefaced her speech by saying that she wanted to announce that, having listened to Darina, any student from Ballymaloe could be able find work in Chez Panisse.
Praise indeed.
There is every evdence from Caroline’s description of the course that the students are worked extremely hard with a fair amount of the time spent looking at where the food actually comes from.

This is such a good basis for the study of any sort of cuisine.
When we in Euro-Toque gave a symposium about children’s dietary habits a few years ago Giacomo Moioli of Slow Food International, said that they had only managed to effect children’s diet by starting a school vegetable garden.
There is no doubt that watching something grow gives you an great appetite to eat it.