Rachel Allen on working with Yummy Brummy Glynn Purnell and My Kitchen Rules UK
When Birmingham’s Yummy Brummie – aka Glynn Purnell – hit Channel 4 TV screens this autumn for My Kitchen Rules UK, he was joined by the rather lovely Rachel Allen.
The Irish cook is a well-known celebrity chef, best-selling author and cookery school teacher who is based in Cork.
She has made a series of her own TV shows, including Rachel’s Favourite Food, Rachel’s Favourite Food for Friends, Rachel’s Favourite Food at Home and Rachel Allen: Bake! as well as writing a string of best-selling books. They include Rachel’s Favourite Food, Rachel’s Favourite Food for Friends, Rachel’s Favourite Food at Home, Home Cooking and Coast.
There is no one better placed than Rachel, therefore, to tell us what it’s like to be a celebrity chef. “Well, I love my work. And I love working with Glynn on My Kitchen Rules UK. We filmed 40 episodes, so it’s a really long series.
“We’d already met one another before the show, at the BBC Good Food Show and places like that. So it was really, really lovely to get to work with him. I think we got on so well and that definitely made for good filming. He’s hilarious. In fact, we just had to stop filming some times because we’d just be laughing too much. He’s very quick witted but he’s very kind as well. He was generous and aware of the effort that had gone in. I didn’t know which of us would be good cop and bad cop. We both came from quite a fair people.”
The work of a celebrity chef isn’t just about showing people how to cook – particularly not on My Kitchen Rules UK. It’s also about bringing the best out of people and making them feel comfortable in unfamiliar surrounds.
“Really, it’s a big thing for a lot of the people taking part. They’ve been wanting to go on the show and it’s a lot of pressure. For all of them, cooking is not their job, it’s not their career. Things got hot and emotional and we have to take them through it.
“I love their enthusiasm. Some people show nerves in different ways. Some are quite, some are dizzy, for instance. Each episode took a day to shoot and the contestants and crew ended up being like a family.”
Making TV shows is only part of Rachel’s work. She also works at the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School, in Cork, as a teacher. Her home is located nearby and she cooks with produce from the school’s estate.
“Ballymaloe is really great and I love it. Teaching is my favourite thing of all, work wise. I think the teaching is at the core of everything I do. Whether it’s demonstrations, judging, writing or presenting a show.”
Rachel has had a fascinating career after going to the Ballymaloe Cookery School as an 18-year-old. She graduated from the school and cooked at the Ballymaloe House Hotel, becoming so accomplished that she returned to teach at the Cookery School.
“I love bringing the best out of people and giving them the confidence to go for it and improve,” she says.
“When it comes to cooking, I love all of it. If I had to choose just one thing, it would be baking. I love the simple act of baking a cake, just a simple cake with my daughter, or to give as a gift. I love the meditative calm about it. I love eating something baked, with a cup of tea.”
She’s also travelled the world, working for a while in Vancouver, before returning to her beloved Ballymaloe. She became a TV star after Irish station RTÉ broadcast her first series, Rachel’s Favourite Food, and soon the show was picked up by stations in Australia, Canada and Europe, and elsewhere. Successful books followed and there were two further TV series, which made Rachel a household name.
She remains a frequent guest on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, and is one of the presenters on the Good Food Channel Market Kitchen show.
Rachel is well known to readers of many national newspapers, having written columns for many years. She has also contributed to BBC Good Food magazine and has been seen on the stages of the BBC Good Food Show.
For a while, she was among the favourites to feature on the Channel 4 Bake Off, before the station decided to go for a different team of presenters. As well as teaching, presenting TV shows and doing food festival demonstrations, Rachel also runs a restaurant with her husband, Isaac Allen. “There’s a broad portfolio when you’re in my line of work. I teach at the cookery school a couple of times a week. Then if I’m writing, I write for the Sunday Independent every week, I did that yesterday morning. Then for my other work, I spend a lot of time filming as an ambassador for Land Rover, which takes me to all sorts of places.
“We have a restaurant in cork city, Rachel’s, which we opened six months ago. Either my husband or I are in the restaurant every day. We bring the produce up every day from the farm. It’s good, it’s busy. It’s really from a place to show the lovely, great produce that we have on the farm. We showcase the wonderful seafood and the great meat – we have fantastic farmers and butchers. It’s so funny, it’s so different to all my other work.”
Rachel also writes a cookbook most years, spending 12 months to get it right.
“I like them to be user friendly. I want people to use the books and for them to work. It’s lovely to have coffee table books to sit and browse through. But I love it most when there’s dough and splashes of sauce on the book.
“It all starts with a meeting with the publisher at Harper Collins. We come up with a plan and I test recipes before writing and doing the photography. It takes a year from beginning to end. I love the people I work with on all of my different projects. They are what makes it enjoyable. The people are just incredible. They continually blow me away.”
Andy Richardson
