Allen had another inspiration as well. The woman who would become her mother-in-law, Myrtle Allen, bucked the trends of the time and in the 1960s opened her family's home as a restaurant serving local seasonal foods. "Myrtle had no training. She wrote the menu every day, depending completely on what was available, " Allen says. "The idea of putting whiting on a menu because it was in season simply wasn't done."

Hotel rooms followed; to get a liquor license, Myrtle Allen had to offer at least 10 bedrooms. Today, the exquisite country-house dating from the 14th century is one of Ireland's most revered hotels.

DOWN ON THE FARM

Darina Allen has made her own mark as a female chef (once an impossibility), teacher (she and husband Tim started the school on a wish and a pittance), TV personality and author. But one of her favorite roles, still, is farmer-gatherer.

"If I had my way, no chef would be allowed in the kitchen without spending a year on a farm, " she says. (Foraging counts too, which is why, on a bright fall afternoon, you may find her mucking through the low coastal tide in search of cockles for the morrow's class.)

Allen's regard for farmers led her to organize a resurgence of farmer's markets, and on any Saturday morning when she's in town you will find her in her shawl at the weekly market at Midleton, selling mushroom a la creme, chicken liver paté, tomato fondue and banana bread that students and staff have made from her recipes.

If you can't make the Midleton market, she'll reel off a list of others. Six days a week -- if you can manage the traffic -- there's the permanent English Market in Cork City, a century-old covered hall of anchovies, marinated aubergine, fresh feta, artisanal cheeses, giant scones, rhubarb crumble, pork-and-plum terrine, pigs feet, beef and lamb just off the farm.

But her favorites are the roadside stands that have cropped up in towns like Schull, home to several of the region's top artisan foodmakers. So it is that on a Sunday morning, in a parking lot just off the winding main street, you can buy smoked gouda and cheese oatcakes from the renowned Gubbeen Farmhouse, and find that the man who sells it, Tom Ferguson, made it with his wife Giani.

Or you might find yourself tasting pork rillette, smoked pancetta and spicy salami with a bearded man named Frank Krawczyk, who has transformed his Polish grandmother's recipes into acclaimed gourmet products. "I wanted to do this 28 years ago but Ireland wasn't ready, " he says. "I'm not sure it's ready now, but it's further along the way."

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