Deirdre Veldon improves her cooking skills in a tiny kitchen with a big heart
Cookery schools are big business. Ask anyone who has ever tried to enrol for a course. But getting a few culinary fundamentals straight doesn't have to cost the earth. First, remove the demonstration mirrors on the ceiling, the five-star accommodation and the complex tasting menus. Next, pack your stripped-down cookery course off to a tiny island off the coast of Cork. Acquaint yourself with the locals and get a charming, but unusual restaurant up and running. Do a bit of clever, but low-key marketing based on the school's unique characteristics. Stir. Leave to mature for a decade or so. The result will probably resemble Island Cottage Cookery School at Hare Island, off Skibbereen, Co Cork.
The brochure for the two-day cookery course at Island Cottage describes, to the minute, how your time will be spent. This falls apart immediately as I pull into the car park at Cunnamore pier, late for the 9.55 a.m. prescribed arrival time and cutting it fine for the 10 a.m. ferry. There's no more time to fuss over a suitable wardrobe for a weekend of cookery and island-living, as it's on to the most likely-looking ferry. When nothing has happened several minutes later, I ask, with the anxiety of folk fresh from the city, whether I'm on the "right" boat. The skipper, Richard, guffaws and points at the island, only a couple of hundred yards away. As if I could be heading anywhere else.
Four minutes later, I am deposited at the pier at Hare Island (locally spelled as Heir Island), and pointed in the general direction of Island Cottage. The owners, John Desmond and Ellmary Fenton, are taking in a fish delivery - raw material for the weekend - when I arrive at their unassuming home and business.
One glance at the kitchen and I see why Ellmary and John proudly describe it as the smallest cookery school in the world. A maximum of two people are welcome on the two-day courses in the minuscule kitchen, which would be considered small in an average home.
John overcomes the kitchen's spatial deficiencies through a combination of military organisation and balletic grace. It is a remarkably well-stocked galley, albeit with only the simplest and most essential appliances. John weaves around, pot, bowl or whisk in hand, cutting through a minimum of floor and air space and making his trainees feel like maladroit butterfingers. He believes implements should interfere with the cooking as little as possible, and a sophisticated gadget can usually be replaced by a simple alternative, to produce a superior result. He spends a few minutes on the subject of garlic crushers, asking us with earnest interest which types we think work best. He then proceeds to deftly crush several cloves of garlic, using a fork and a piece of butter paper, smirking all the while.
His sole indulgence, and a hint of his previous life, is a prized collection of heavy copper bowls and pots, brought from France. Trained as a chef at the Ritz Hotel and the Michelin three-star Taillevent restaurant in Paris, John spent a number of years as a cookery teacher at the influential École de Cuisine La Varenne Paris. Ellmary was then working as the manager of the Obélisque restaurant in the Hôtel de Crillon.
The move back to Ireland was prompted by a chance visit to Hare Island with friends. "I walked the island with Ellmary and said if I ever lived in Ireland this was where I'd like to live," he says. The couple moved to Hare Island in 1989 with the intention keeping their jobs in France and using Island Cottage as a summer home. "Once I got back to Ireland, I realised we couldn't afford a holiday home. You couldn't half do it, and so we decided to move back full time."
The French influence is very much in evidence at Island Cottage. Nothing is wasted, and time is invested in getting the basics spot-on. The emphasis here is on using every part of readily-available fresh ingredients, cooked simply, with the characteristic Gallic deference to quality stocks and sauces. For instance, the haul of prawns that arrive with us are simmered and the meat extracted. The shells are then baked in the oven and crushed to extract the colour and flavour. These go into a fish stock, along with butter, and the pot simmers for a couple of hours. Eventually, a lurid orange "prawn butter" floats to the top and is painstakingly skimmed off. This butter can then be frozen and used to enrich sauces as required.
Similarly, the intensive duck class explores the humble bird in the most intimate fashion. We prepare duck stock, duck pâté, duck fat, confit de gésier and duck stew ... whatever you're having yourself, so long as it's duck. Anything not used in the cooking is brought down to the seagulls, who must be sorely disappointed to see John, bucket in hand, ambling along the seashore, knowing almost every available ounce of usefulness has been extracted.
Mornings are spent in the kitchen making breads, pasta and lunch and doing prep work for the evening meal. After lunch, no-nonsense Ellmary takes the students in hand with a hike around the island. Her neighbours chuckle over the "enforced march" imposed in all weathers, but the ramble to the far side of the picture-postcard island in benign sunshine is a delight. The ramble also enhances the day's meal. John sends his charges out with instructions to collect sea beet - a wild spinach-like vegetable with waxy leaves which grows along the shoreline. Cooked in salted water, it is quite delicious.
The island's permanent population of around 25 swells to 200 in the summer months. Few "outsiders" try to make their living on the island year-round. "If you can live here all year round, you can have a better relationship with the local community," says John.
Like most island-dwellers, John and Ellmary's income is derived from a variety of sources. In addition to the cookery school, activities include the restaurant, and off-season, a private dinner party service and cookery demonstrations. In winter, John also paints stunning abstract works in acrylic.
In summertime, up to 24 dinner guests arrive by ferry in the evening from Cunnamore pier or Baltimore for an evening meal. A typical no-choice €35 menu might include a tartare of salmon on a bed of pickled cucumber with a light olive oil herb sauce, followed by breast of duck with a mushroom sauce and oven-roasted potatoes with rosemary and chillies. This could be followed by Gubbeen cheese from Schull, served with green salad, and finally a hot lemon crèpe soufflé on a bed of fresh berries.
On the second day of the cookery course, students are "loaned" Island Cottage's restaurant to invite family and friends to lunch and enjoy the fruits of their weekend's training. And even if the trainees aren't yet up to three-star grade, the guests won't suffer, as John quietly orchestrates events in the kitchen. Big-business cookery schools would do well to watch out for cottage industries such as this one.
• The two-day course costs €200 per person. www.islandcottage.com
JOHN DESMOND'S BROWN BREAD
1 litre milk
50ml olive oil
50ml red wine vinegar
1kg extra coarse brown flour
20g bread soda
10g salt
20g sugar
50g unsalted butter for tins
In a large bowl, mix the milk, olive oil and red wine vinegar. Pour flour into another large bowl with salt, sugar and sieved bread soda. Mix well. Add liquid in one go and gently combine ingredients. The mixture should be quite moist. Butter four 1lb cake tins. Divide mixture between the tins. Bake for one hour in oven pre-heated to 200 degrees. Fully-cooked bread will sound hollow when tapped. Leave to cool.
From cottage to big house: cookery schools in Ireland
Ballyknocken Country House & Cookery School, Glenealy, Ashford, Co Wicklow. 0404-44627, www.ballyknocken.com
Ballymaloe Cookery School, Shanagarry, Co Cork. 021-4646785, www.cookingisfun.ie
Belle Isle School of Cookery, Belle Isle Estate, Lisbellaw, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. 048-66387231, www.irish-cookery-school.com
Berry Lodge Country Home & Cookery School, Annagh, Miltown Malbay, Co Clare. 065-7087022, www.berrylodge.com
Carlingford Cookery School, Ghan House, Carlingford, Co Louth. 042- 373682, www.ghanhouse.com
Dunbrody Abbey Cookery Centre, Dunbrody Abbey Mews, Campile, Co Wexford. 051-388933, www.cookingireland.com
Dunbrody Country House Hotel & Restaurant Cookery School, Dunbrody, Arthurstown, New Ross, Co Wexford. 051-389600, www.dunbrodyhouse.com
Island Cottage Cookery School, Hare Island, Skibbereen, Co Cork. 028-38102, www.islandcottage.com
Pangur Bán Restaurant, Letterfrack, Connemara, Co Galway. 095- 1243, www.pangurban.com
Pontoon Bridge Hotel Cookery School, Pontoon, Co Mayo. 094-256120, www.pontoon.mayo-ireland.ie.
Who's Cooking, Amber Lodge, 184 Mealough Road, Drumbo, Belfast BT8 8LY. 048-90826229, www.whoscooking.co.uk