A dessert trolley is not the sort of thing you’d expect to be of interest to a 22-year-old man who has just graduated with a degree in natural science from Trinity College Dublin. Demolishing its contents, perhaps, but not assembling the array of dishes.
But after years of working part-time in Ballymaloe House (he started out when he was 15 years old), JR Ryall was offered the position of head pastry chef by its matriarch, Myrtle Allen, who everyone, including family, addressed as Mrs Allen. He had yet to finish his studies, but they shook hands on it, and he moved there permanently in 2010. He has been there ever since.
It turned out to be a very good choice. In 2019, the Ballymaloe dessert trolley picked up a gong at the world Restaurant Awards in Paris, and now with the release of his new cookbook, Ballymaloe Desserts, Ryall is set to take the dessert world by storm. One trolley at a time.
In two weeks’ time, he’ll be doing a counter takeover in Violet Cakes in east London, owned by Claire Ptak who rose to fame after making the royal wedding cake for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. This will be followed by a dessert takeover in Skye Gyngell’s Spring restaurant in Somerset House in London, before heading to King restaurant in New York, which is owned and run by a team of ex-River Café and Ballymaloe Cookery School women chefs.
He already has his Jerpoint Glass bowls, Fermoyle Pottery plates and Stable linen cloths in storage there so that he can pull a trolley together that has “that proper feeling”. “It’s not just about the food and the dishes, often it’s about how it is presented,” he says.
So what is it about an old fashioned dessert trolley and a 34-year-old pastry chef from a farm near Ballyhooly, Co Cork that seems to have captured the imagination of the culinary world? And are dessert trolleys even a thing?
While there are certainly some spectacular dessert trolleys out there, such as the walking chocolate chariot inspired by Theo Jansen’s walking sculpture at El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, the desserts on the trolleys in high end restaurants are so artistic and aspirational, you could never recreate them at home. At Ballymaloe, it is all about simple classics, the desserts that remind us of childhood and family gatherings, and the puddings that are rooted in the Irish country tradition, as well as a few show-stoppers.
Ryall was the last chef to be trained by Mrs Allen, who died in 2018 at 94 years of age. He sees the cookbook as a commemoration of her legacy, of the sheer foresight and valiant wisdom of a woman who opened the doors of her Shanagarry country house in 1964, cooking intuitively and serving dinner to guests using the produce from her husband’s farm. She was the first Irish woman to win a Michelin star in 1975, and she held it for five years.
I find, when I come back from a trip and I have soda bread and butter, and I have a shortbread biscuit or the ice cream using that old fashioned technique, it’s something that I haven’t seen in the other places
The dessert trolley was there from day one, made by carpenter Danny Power to her specifications — a top shelf where the desserts were displayed, and a shelf underneath for plates, serving utensils and cutlery. The four trolleys that are now used in Ballymaloe follow the same design.
Allen planned the dessert menu each morning, and at a very early stage she realised that if people wanted to try a bit of everything, the various elements on the trolley had better all eat well together. So she grouped the desserts into five categories — fruit, meringues, mousses and jellies, frozen desserts such as ice creams and sorbets, and a pastry, cake or pudding.
This is the structure Ryall follows in his cookbook, interspersed with helpful tips. With stunning photographs by Cliodhna Prendergast and delicious recipes such as pistachio meringue roulade, gooseberry fool, an ice cream bomb, and gateau Pithiviers, it is not a book to read when you’re hungry.
“One of my favourite desserts, and it doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, or what the occasion is, is carrageen moss pudding,” says Ryall. “It’s the one dessert we serve every night, but actually, I love it so much that if it’s left over, I’ll have it for breakfast. It’s a soft-set seaweed milk, and the tradition of making it in Ireland goes back centuries, but the version in Ballymaloe is soft and gentle, it’s not too seaweedy.”
Like many young chefs, Ryall has staged (an unpaid internship) in some of the world’s top restaurants, taking a two-month break each year to travel, while Anne Healy and the team of pastry chefs in the kitchen take over in his absence. Spending time in Bangkok, South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Mexico, it seems almost surprising that none of these influences have crept into the dishes on the dessert trolley. Instead, discovering dishes that have a true sense of place in other countries has reinforced the importance in his mind of preserving the integrity of the classic dishes he cooks in the restaurant.
“I find, when I come back from a trip and I have soda bread and butter, and I have a shortbread biscuit or the ice cream using that old fashioned technique, it’s something that I haven’t seen in the other places. So it actually gives me confidence not to play around with what we have and sometimes to let it be, as it is, and decide that that really is the best version of something.
“And it makes me very happy actually, being able to do that. But you do certainly have to be very confident in serving something plain quite often, and the temptation is there to do the cheffy thing and add the detail. But often deciding not to do that is the best decision,” says Ryall.
“In staying in Ballymaloe so long, my priority was never to try to change things or to alter them, it was to try to distil the very best of it, to hold on to it, and then around the edge I can add in the new things and try the new dishes.
“And that’s very exciting for people who come here all the time, who are very used to carrageen moss pudding, and the things that we’ve always been doing, that there is a new dish for that guest as well. But I think holding on to the things that really matter most to the place, have in some ways been the hardest part of my job, but also the bit that I look at most fondly,” he says.
Ryall jokes that Ballymaloe has never been trendy, but that over the years, he has seen much of what Mrs Allen set value on, and what all the team there set value on, becoming trendy elsewhere. “The idea of home-made butter, the idea of a seaweed pudding, or the idea of the heritage apple variety, whatever it is, it’s fascinating when something does become a trend,” he says.
“And you see other people replicating it. It literally moves from coast to coast, and you realise that Mrs Allen was doing it all along. And it just makes me wonder, how did she have the confidence to do all of these things, when it was so almost against the grain at the time? It is amazing.”
Ballymaloe Desserts by JR Ryall is published by Phaidon, €49.95
Recipe: Mrs Allen’s Carrageen Moss Pudding
Recipe: Walnut meringue gâteau with pears
Recipe: Sparkling jelly with wild strawberries, blueberries and peach
