one big reason for that is ballymaloe cookery school.been coming from around the world in recent years to learn cooking skills, and taste some of the food created by internationally renowned cook darina allen. darina, thank you so much for having us here. you're going to demonstrate something to cook for us, but what is it? very simple. i can't let you leave ireland without being able to make a soda bread. irish soda bread is thought to date back to the early 1800s, and was popular partly due to its simplicity. really important thing to remember with soda bread is you don't knead it, so no need to knead. it can be made in minutes from just four ingredients — flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. do you see how lovely and gloopy that is? yeah. that's from my own jersey cows. how cool is that? so just flatten it out. finally, darina adds the traditional blessing of the bread by scoring a cross in the top of the dough to help it open out as it cooks. and then — very important — you've got to let the fairies out of the bread. you prick it

one big reason for that is ballymaloe cookery school.we need to put it straight in the oven. so you have a huge estate here, darina. well, it's.. darina began the cooking school here in the '805 on the same estate where her mother—in—law, myrta allen, established a restaurant two decades earlier. within a few years of starting the school, people began coming from around the world. so, if you had to define what irish cuisine is, what would you say? well, now, i know a lot of people might have thought we live on corned beef and cabbage, but of course it's changed so much over the years. but the fantastic thing is that here in ireland we have such brilliant raw materials and such great produce. so what we would serve at ballymaloe — our basis of what we do is irish country house cooking, but then with all kinds of influences from all over the world — from india, mexico. because we can grow things — we can grow epazote from mexican food. of course, we grow those curry leaves, lime leaves — all kinds of things. and there we go. and before i l