The Menu: it's time for part one of the annual Munchies awards
JR Ryall, author of “Ballymaloe Desserts” at the launch of his debut cookbook.
Cookbook of the Year
Aged 59, the very wonderful Jeremy Lee, of London’s Quo Vadis and a real chef’s chef, finally got around to releasing the first cookbook of his long and illustrious career and Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many (Harper Collins) is very much worth the wait, justly described as an ‘instant classic’.
There is a temptation to hand over the keys to the entire kingdom to the very splendid Kristin Jensen, Ireland’s newest cookbook and food publishing supremo, whose two imprints, Blasta Books and Nine Bean Rows have had an impossibly successful year. The first four salvos in the Blasta Book Series 1 (Tacos By Lily Ramirez-Foran, Hot Fat , by The GastroGays, United Nations of Cookies by Jess Murphy and Eoin Cluskey and Wok by Kwanghi Chan) are small yet perfectly formed, bold, bright and very smartly designed and containing absolutely no filler.
And for Mains: Recipes, Stories and Pints with an Irish Butcher and a Chef (Nine Bean Rows), by Gaz Smith and Rick Higgins with Nicola Brady, is a real ‘weekend’ cookbook with a distinctly carnivorous bent, for when you want to spend a few hours in the kitchen with a bottle or two on the go, turning out sumptuous rich meals with a distinctly Falstaff-ian flavour, to both preparation and consumption.
But The Menu’s cookbook of the year, hands down, a worthy winner in any year, is JR Ryall’s Ballymaloe Desserts , a very special publication indeed from Ballymaloe House’s award-winning pastry chef. Skim through and first impression is of an especially attractive publication anchored in the culinary philosophy of his late great mentor, Myrtle Allen. A more attentive second reading confirms it is indeed that but so much more, an eminently readable yet near scholarly primer in the fundamentals of a professional pastry kitchen but delivered in a manner that will nurture competent amateurs into becoming infinitely better cooks.
Equally, it should be prescribed material for any serious professional pastry chef for though it is shorn of the foams and gels, the dabs, smears and dots of modernist cuisine, it gets to the very heart of what it takes to divine the essence of the ‘sweet stuff’, especially fruits, sugars, spices, flours, fats and other primary ingredients of the pastry larder, and render them as delicious desserts, both rock solid renditions of old classics and Ryall’s innovative creations and updatings.
Special mention must also be made of its visual appeal: usually, a cookbook’s stylist will fetch up with a grab bag of backdrop materials, ‘weathered’ woods, metals, fabrics etc and a clutch of vintage cookware to provide settings that, after a while, blur most contemporary cookbooks into one another, united by an ersatz faux-authenticity; here, Cliodhna Prendergast’s quite beautiful images are greatly enhanced by a decision to photograph Ryall’s culinary creations on gorgeous, often art-deco or classic style dishes from the 50s, 60s and 70s, from his own personal collection, from Ballymaloe House or borrowed from close friends, creating a style that is entirely novel, a vibrant, fresh take on timeless.
I may get two copies: one to work from, and to endure all the wear and tear and general manhandling of a messy kitchen; and another for The Menu’s gilded library, to be taken down with kid gloves and marvelled at in hushed silence for years to come. JR Ryall’s Ballymaloe Desserts is The Menu’s Cookbook of the Year 2022.
Food Organisation of the Year
The Cork Urban Soil Project is an urban composting pilot, the first of its kind in Ireland, that began back in early 2018 to explore ways to make soil in the city from food waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill, but instead making it into rich, fertile compost in a very short amount of time using an aerobic biodigester (a mechanical composting machine. It began as a collaboration between Molly Garvey (now with GIY) and Virginia O’Gara of My Goodness Foods, working with Mahon Point Farmer’s Market but since evolved with Cork City Planner Erin O’Brien coming on for a year as project manager of a small-scale trial funded by a Circular Economy Innovation Grant, a role she has only recently relinquished, heading back to City Hall once more, and all the ‘heavy lifting’ is done by the project’s gardener, Aoife Cronin-O’Connell.
Earlier this year, The Menu cycled down to My Goodness HQ in the Marina Industrial Estate to witness the many volunteers who’d turned up for the day, hauling this precious black gold, most of it now made in the biodigester from the (comparatively small!) amount of food waste generated by the My Goodness operation, and putting it into mobile growing beds to create a moveable micro-farm alongside. These beds are then used to grow produce for My Goodness to be used in their splendid range of plant-based foods and beverages, and any waste, yep, goes back into the biodigester, thus creating a closed-loop circular food system, replicating nature’s own elemental model.
The current team have been demoing the model to highly enlightened restaurateurs around the city, keen to see how it might work in other small spaces, especially for hospitality, traditionally, a major producer of food waste. One of humanity’s greatest challenges is the ongoing and devastating loss of the earth’s soil, literally essential to human life. The fight to reverse this must take place on many battlefields, large and small; Cork Urban Soil Project may be tiny in the grand scheme of things but is leading from the front like a true general inspiring its troops!
Farmer’s Market of the Year
One of the blessings of eased restrictions has been a return to normal trading at the farmer’s markets around the country and this year, The Menu managed more than a couple of trips to an oldie but goldie, Midleton Farmer’s Market. Anyone living in Cork is now especially well served when it comes to sourcing finest Irish produce from a variety of sources, including farmer’s markets, CSAs, box delivery schemes and farm gate retailing but the Midleton Farmer’s Market was the very first in the country, founded by our own Darina Allen in tandem with local producers, in 2000, when you had to work that bit harder to source fine local, fresh, seasonal produce.
The Menu first wrote about it here in Weekend over two decades ago, back in 2002 and, certainly, there have been changes over the years, not least move to the far more appealing Market Green, and there are far more hot food vendors than were in operation on his very first visit, as farmer’s markets have become a social gathering as much as a shopping expedition for many visitors but they are very welcome additions, including Volcano Pizza, Spice Genie and The Lobster Man.
The Menu marks the departure of some old favourites over the years but many remain and it is a role call of some of the finest producers in Irish food: Ardsallagh, Ballintubber Farm, Woodside Farm, Frank Hederman, Arbutus Bread, Ballymaloe Cookery School, Barrie Tyner’s superb paté, Willie Scannell and his Ballycotton Spuds, Ahern’s Organic Farm, Organic Republic, Annie’s Roasts, Ballinrostig Cheese, and a whole host more, selling finest Irish produce, meats, fish, vegetables and fruit, most of it locally produced in the East Cork hinterland. Midleton is The Menu’s Farmer’s Market of the Year.
