A Quiet Food Revolution: The Story of Myrtle and Darina Allen
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2013
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Myrtle and Darina Allen, revolutionised food in Ireland with their cooking. From pioneering restaurants to groundbreaking farmers' markets, Dan Saladino tells the story of food and Ballymaloe.
In 1964 Myrtle Allen, a mother and farmers' wife turned her home in Cork into a restaurant like no other. Ingredients were grown on the family farm, foraged locally or sourced by producers nearby. Unusual for its time, menus were written on a daily basis and traditional Irish recipes were celebrated.
The restaurant influenced people's thinking on what a restaurant could be. In 1968 Myrtle was joined by a young ambitious cook from Dublin, Darina O'Connell. She married into the family and became the now much celebrated Darina Allen, cook, writer and television presenter.
The Food Programme looks at five decades of work, in food, by the two women, from the original restaurant Ballymaloe House to the world famous Ballymaloe Cookery school. It features adventures in Paris, pioneering ideas on how food should be bought and sold as well as campaigns to keep food traditions alive.
Producer: Dan Saladino.
Transcript
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| 0:59.2 | In the garden of a farmhouse near the village of Shannagari and Kante Cork, |
| 1:07.0 | former students of a cookery school, past and present, are gathered. |
| 1:11.0 | A reunion is underway. |
| 1:13.0 | This celebration held two weeks ago marked three decades in which thousands of students have been taught cooking skills. |
| 1:25.1 | Not usually the kind of event that draws outside attention, but since the Balimaloo Cookery |
| 1:29.8 | School opened its doors in 1983, chances are that in that time you've cooked from a recipe book, |
| 1:36.3 | eaten a meal, watched a television program, or read a newspaper article on food produced |
| 1:41.5 | by one of its students. You know, there are people who are brewing. on food The school's founder, Derena Allen, more from her in a moment because also in the crowd, was a woman whose story isn't so well known outside Ireland today. |
| 2:00.0 | She not only turned Ballymallew and a remote part of Ireland into a food destination, |
| 2:05.3 | she became a radical and influential thinker, |
... |
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