A SPRING day in January at Ballymaloe, the palace of the empress of Irish cuisine, Myrtle Allen, and the dauphine, Darina Allen.
Though I have been writings about Myrtle and her splendid husband, Ivan, and her daughter-in-law, Darina, since some" time shortly after that sad business involving Kitty O'Shea, this was the first time I had ever been to Ballymaloe, and for no, better occasion - the a.g.m. of Irish Euro-Toques, the society, of European chefs, and a farewell dinner to Myrtle after her three years as president of Euro-Toques, Europe.
It has taken years of Euro-folly to reveal the need for Euro-Toques, which was founded in 1986 in order not, merely to maintain culinary standards within Europe, but, also to protect the basic foodstuffs of Europe as a distinct part of European culture.
During those 10 years, Europe has moved steadily towards food crisis. The tectonic plates of a Common Agricultural Policy promoting the interests of the big battalions of well-organised, politically-influential producers, the farmers collided with those vast, subterranean forces, the commercial interests of the huge factory processors. The resulting impact has thrown up Alps of butter and Apennines of beef, all dotted with lakes of milk powder, whose height and depth are maintained by vast intervention procedures.
Meanwhile, a Europe-wide inspectorate has been established to impose conformity and sterilisation on the small and unrepresented small food producers and effectively to police them out of existence, regardless of what that poor dolt, the consumer, wanted.
Confusing Law
The BSE scandal is, in truth, a CAP scandal. Bad law, and confusing law, combined with disordered, political priorities established by one group, the producers, to move us towards this crisis. The one consolation might be, as Mary O'Connell of Carlow, who runs one of the great butcher's in Ireland, told Euro-Toques Ireland, that the scandal might be a blessing in disguise.
For the most part, this is not a story of heroes and villains, but of political priorities going wrong. If beef farmers are confused by what has happened, who can blame them? Matt Dempsey, editor of Irish Farmers Journal reminded us that growth hormones were permitted under European law between 1980 and 1988, and were a legitimate means of making more money for farmers. Then they were outlawed, though they remain lawful in the US.
Goaded into expectation of an EU-sponsored, artificial return on EU-sponsored artificial growth in artificially large, EU-sponsored herds, is it surprising that farmers took shortcuts to get quick returns?
Hormonal growth-promoters had been used in Europe, without ill-effect, were outlawed by the EU, even as it effectively continued to subsidise the distribution of lethal animal feed made from camouflaged sheep spine.
Meanwhile, the health police of Europe were blithely ignoring the real threat to our foods and our health, and instead were withdrawing licences from harmless cheese-producers because their cheese vats were measured in imperial rather than metric, and ordering small abattoirs to construct unnecessary and expensive freezers or be shut down by law.
Perfect Fable
If you want a classic example of the socially catastrophic consequences of a single interest group being given all it wants, while a police force busies itself being silly, the story of BSE in Europe is a perfect fable.
Euro-Toques is one the organisation able to bring sense and wisdom to this Euroslum of folly and political myopia and happily, in Ireland we are blessed with an extremely vigilant and active Euro-Toques which now draws on some of our best and most conscientious restaurateurs.
Nobody enters the restaurant business simply to make money; a perverse desire to stay up late and get up early to make other people happy, a real and serious culinary intellect, and demented quantities of enthusiasm are the engine for what restaurateurs do. That they are prepared to do it, we should all be profoundly happy; and they could have no finer inspiration that Myrtle, and the much unsung Ivan, who, I do not doubt, provides so much of business acumen behind the success of Ballymaloe.
It is something of a cliche to bang on and on about Ballymaloe but the urge to write about it is as irrepressible for a journalist as it would be to "disclose the discovery that the Taoiseach nightly visited an opium den in Termonfeckin, where he covered himself with olive oil and danced naked with the Archbishop of Canterbury. These desires to write what you know can be overwhelming, even though in the case of Ballymaloe, you already know it, too.
Herb Beds
What you perhaps do not know is the unbelievable amount of work that goes into the making of this most Elysian of places. Even in January, when nothing in the garden moves, Darina's sister and a companion were toiling in the vast and wondrous herb beds outside Darina's school, a mile or so from Ballymaloe itself, where industry is unremitting. It is industry such as those of us who do not cater for others can only wonder at. Each Sunday, for example, Ballymaloe serves its buffet, a term which can often be an excuse for a Eurolake of mayonnaise upon a multitude of sins called cold cuts.
Needless to say, it is no such thing in B'loe. But not even the most deranged optimist could expect the table that awaits one in this buffet: two kinds of smoked salmon, four pates, including guinea fowl, chicken and pork-liver, smoked mussels, duck en croute, mussels in their shells, vol-au-vents, prawns, and quite ravishing pickles, including a quite stunning cucumber, one I am perfectly prepared to hold an Allen head or two underwater for as long as necessary, to get the right recipe for.
But, of course, "right recipe" is only one-tenth the battle. For the meats which followed were plain baked meats - ham, beef, lamb, turkey - but touched by the gentle wand of Ballymaloe. Even the fried mushrooms taste extraordinarily different there. I am truly sorry to burden you with all these cliches, but Ballymaloe is as wondrous as the Allens which made it possible, and that is very wondrous indeed. Thank God for the lot of them.