Frommer's Ireland 2011 (Frommer's Complete Guides) - Softcover

Food and Beverage Highlight: Ballymaloe Cookery School, Cork

Photo by Ballymaloe Cookery School

The word "idyllic" comes to mind upon sight of Ballymaloe's cozy farmstead. Just outside a small fishing village in county Cork, this collection of 18th-century cottages is surrounded by gardens and mossy orchards and, surrounding that, a flourishing organic farm. As rustic as the buildings look from the outside, once you step inside you'll find a smartly equipped culinary classroom with large windows, a phalanx of counters and chopping blocks, and cooktops ready for action.

Christi Daugherty is an expat American. A former journalist, she’s the author of several travel books including Frommer’s Ireland 2010 and Frommer’s Paris Day by Day. She also co-wrote Frommer’s MTV Ireland and Frommer’s MTV Europe. She learned everything she knows about Ireland accidentally, while getting lost repeatedly over the course of many years. She likes to think that she gets lost so you don’t have to. These days she and her husband and co-writer Jack Jewers spend their spare time traveling around Ireland (she drives, he navigates) looking for new places to explore. She spends whatever time is left over writing unpublished mystery novels.

Jack Jewers has directed fi lms for the BBC, reviewed publications for Time Out, and contributed to several guidebooks, including previous editions of Frommer’s Ireland. He also co-wrote Frommer’s Ireland Day by Day. Jack grew up listening to his great aunt’s tales about living in Dublin during the Civil War. She once leaned out of a window during a late-night battle to tell the gunmen to keep the noise down—people were trying to sleep. Born and raised in England, Jack proposed to his Irish-American wife at a spa in County Kerry. She said yes. That spa gets a great review in this book.