Cooking up a storm

Chef Catherine Fulvio’s Ballyknocken House is very tempting, says Pól Ó Conghaile

CATHERINE FULVIO is one of Ireland’s best-known celebrity chefs. She wasn’t always shopping cookery books and sizzling on TV, however. “Don’t let the Fulvio fool you. My maiden name is Byrne, so I’m a real Wicklow woman,” she told me. The heart of her cottage empire is Ballyknocken House, a Victorian farmhouse that her mother first opened as a B&B in 1969.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS