Catherine Fulvio

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The media have caught up with Catherine Fulvio, turning this polyglot chef, teacher, B&B keeper and mother into an officially famous person. She is likely to remain in the media eye for a long time, for no one is as collected and calm a figure, despite what whirlwinds of work are battening around her. She is Wicklow born, reared and educated, though we should say Ballyknocken House born, reared and educated, for the deep culture that makes her so rooted goes right back to her infancy, helping her mother in the kitchen of the B&B, helping her father on the farm.

That sort of education has become unfashionable today, but there is no better advocate or example of the school of hard work than Mrs Fulvio. The domestic and farm work was done “not because it was fashionable, but because that was our lifestyle and our business as farmers”. The farm is as productive as ever, but today the focus is on the work of the culinary culture – education, enlightenment, enjoyment, all animated by a voluble energy. But Catherine Fulvio learnt everything she needed at the hearth, and her work is a tribute to, and a continuation of, that great domestic, agrarian culture, and its complex stitch of confidence and steadfastness.

Ballyknocken House & Cookery School, Glenealy, Ashford, County Wicklow
0404 44627
http://www.ballyknocken.com