This book has been a long time coming and really is a distillation of much of my work in the kitchen over the past 30 years. My work has been divided between restaurants and cooking schools and it is this combination of experience – fast and furious in a kitchen serving food to paying customers, calmer and more measured in the schoolroom – that has coloured the way I cook now and the way I like to teach people how to cook.
Cooking professionally was never really my plan; I fell into it by accident. Having dropped out of university, I spent a summer working on reception at Ballymaloe House in Cork, supposedly deciding what I was going to do with the rest my life. However, by the end of the summer I was none the wiser as to what I would do to earn a living, but I knew that I did want to learn how to cook some of the delicious dishes I had been eating.
So on that greedy premise, I entered the kitchen with the sole purpose of learning the secrets of these dishes. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life in busy kitchens, but I was going to eat well. How wrong I was. Within a couple of days I had a light bulb moment and I knew that I had found something I loved to do and that I might be reasonably good at. My love affair with food and cooking had begun at our family table in Co Laois with my mothers wonderful ambrosial food, but it was in Cork that I became engaged to it.
In the meantime, I have cooked all over the world to gain knowledge and to share it, and I am as excited about food and cooking now as I was when I realised that I had found exactly what I was looking for. This hasn’t just been a professional journey. Cooking to me is personal – I care about what I am cooking and who I am cooking for.
Speaking of personal, meringues are just such a thing. Some will like them chewy, some chalky and others will like them as suggested here, with a soft marshmallow centre and a thin brittle coat. This recipe is straightforward, and if you have been defeated by meringues in the past, maybe this is the recipe for you. The egg whites and sugar all go in together and are beaten to a very stiff peak. Simple as that. The parchment or non-stick paper on which the meringues are cooked removes a lot of the potential grief from this situation, as they will come away from the paper with the greatest of ease. Strawberries, now bang in season, are a perfect accompaniment. In a couple of weeks’ time, they can be replaced with poached green gooseberries with elderflower.
The grilled chicken dish is also a nod towards summer and depending on your skills at the grill, you might even like to barbeque the meat. I suggest in the recipe to make the almond sauce in a pestle and mortar, and it definitely has a better flavour and texture when made in this way. For a long time, I used to look upon this most ancient of kitchen aids as if it suggested a life of hard labour and valued it for its ornamental appeal rather than its practical use. Now I use it all the time and find myself reaching for it more often than for my food processor.
The herb in the sauce, marjoram, sometimes called summer or annual marjoram is a favourite of mine. It is part of the oregano family, but milder, sweeter and altogether more delicious. Good greengrocers and herb counters will have it and it is not too late to buy a couple of plants to pop into a pot or the garden to get you through the rest of the summer. Be warned though, as it is addictive. Do not use oregano here, as its strong flavour will bully the almonds into unhappy submission, but replace marjoram with thyme, tarragon or rosemary.
Master It, by Rory O'Connell, is published by Fourth Estate, £25. Photographs by Laura Hynd
