JR Ryall on his Cookbook Publishing Journey

Last week, I sat down with my boss (at the time) JR Ryall, and we chatted about his first cookbook, Ballymaloe Desserts, and the publishing process.

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Before I get into the interview with JR, this a new segment where I’ll share my fave things of the week:

Week in brief

What’s in season: I’m late to the party on this one, but the wild garlic is ABUNDANT in Ireland at the moment, if you look in the right places. Make pesto or WGB (wild garlic butter)

What I’m reading: I recently finished Foster by Claire Keegan, which broke my heart - you can read it here or buy it here

What I’m listening to: still Joshua Burnside on a loop since I saw him in Coughlan’s, Cork at the beginning of the month. This song, in particular

What I’m eating: an exceptional dinner at a new restaurant in Blackrock called Laurel

Laurel Restaurant Blackrock

Interview with JR Ryall

I have recently been lucky enough to work closely with JR Ryall, head pastry chef at Ballymaloe House. I learned a lot in the kitchen, but also really enjoyed getting to know JR: his work ethic, creativity and attention to detail are a huge inspiration for me. We solved many of the world’s problems over our daily 8am scone, and had some eventful nights out in Dublin and Paris, too. I started working at Ballymaloe on the day Ballymaloe Desserts was published, and found it really interesting hearing about the process of publishing a cookbook - I hope you do too!

JR and the dessert trolley at Ballymaloe House

JR on his journey into the food industry

I always wanted to do something in food. The earliest memory that I can recall is meeting Darina Allen when I was four years old at the Ballymaloe Cookery School. That day she gave me a copy of her book, it sowed a seed and made me think that maybe I could be a chef. Baking became my childhood passion, though during my school years many people tried to convince me to do other things and I toyed with many ideas. For a while I thought I might be an architect, and at one point I flirted with the idea of studying history of art and architecture. At school my best subjects were the sciences, though I just couldn't shake my curiosity and interest in food. At home I would bake at every opportunity and for my 13th birthday my mother gave me a course at the Ballymaloe cookery school - a two and a half day bread course. Those few days at the cookery school gave me a glimpse of what a career in food could be like. After doing work experience in the pastry kitchen at Ballymaloe House I went on to get a part job there a couple of years later, when I was fifteen. It was there that I first met Myrtle Allen, founder of Ballymaloe, who became a great mentor to me. I have been at Ballymaloe ever since.

Who inspires you?

I take great inspiration from an older generation of female chefs who came before me. Even though she’s not alive, Myrtle Allen is still a huge inspiration to me. When I first met her, she dazzled me and I’ve been inspired by her ever since. Other women I look up to include Darina Allen, Alice Waters and the great Diana Kennedy, to name a few. My mother and my great-aunt too. I also find the newer generation of females inspiring - Claire Ptak, Leila McAlister, Skye Gyngell, and so many others.

What are the main issues in the food industry as you see it?

Currently one of the biggest issues is attracting people into the industry. With so many different types of employment available in todays world it is challenging to offer jobs that are competitive on pay, conditions, and opportunities, and because of this, fewer people are wanting to become cooks. This is a huge issue for those who manage and operate kitchens.

Can you name some of your favourite local restaurants?

The Beach House in Tramore is wonderful, I had a great lunch there last summer. In Cork city I always enjoy going to Cafe Paradiso and Goldie is always great too.

How would you describe your ethos, your values when it comes to cooking?

I think that the style of food I cook is quite traditional. In many ways it is the sort of food that anybody could cook. But I like to focus on details that are easily overlooked that can elevate very simple dishes making them quite special. For me that revolves around getting the best produce to cook with.

Did you always know you wanted to write a book?

Writing a book was always a dream. When I was becoming interested in food as a child, I loved getting my hands on a new cookbook. I would sometimes daydream about what it would be like to write my own book. For those of us who are lucky enough to do the things we love, the idea of leaving an imprint is a really attractive thing, and writing a book is a really nice way of doing this. I imagine it's the same for somebody who loves to sing, if they can record a song, and certainly for cooks, the idea of writing a book and leaving an imprint that way, it's very attractive.

And how did you find the process?

Overall I really enjoyed the process, though some parts of the project were harder than I thought. Early on I realised that words don't necessarily just flow out of a pen, and at times it can be quite a struggle to distil a message down to something really clear. I’m a slow writer but really enjoyed seeing the manuscript coming together, especially during the editing process when things really took shape. There is a lot that I wrote that didn't end up in the finished book. And that surprised me too.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

The idea came about 10 years ago when Hazel Allen asked me to write a small book to sell from the hall table at Ballymaloe House. She imagined around 20 recipes stapled together that people could pick up when they were leaving the restaurant in the evening - but I couldn't imagine what this book would look like, so I didn't do anything on it for years.

In 2019 the dessert trolley at Ballymaloe won an international award at the World Restaurant Awards in Paris and that put a new spotlight on the desserts we were cooking at Ballymaloe. Suddenly people around me were asking, “well, when are you going to write a book?”. And even though I had been thinking about it for years, I still couldn't imagine what the book would look like. So I didn't really push forward with the idea until one evening when a dear friend, David Tanis, the distinguished chef and food writer, told me “you really need to write a book, and I'd love to help you if I can”. I remember asking him what I should do, and he advised me to get a literary agent. I first thought that this seemed like an unnecessary step given I’m just a pastry chef in Ireland, why would I need an agent?! David set me straight and said I should start thinking of agents to talk to. Two months later, I flew to London and I met friends who had written books, and I soon realised that having an agent was really valuable when it came to getting a book deal. The following January, I was in New York doing a pop up at a friends restaurant, and while I was there, they introduced me to their friend who was a literary agent and she took me on.

JR on finding a publisher

I made a list of publishers who I felt could produce the sort of book I was beginning to imagine, and the top of the list was Phaidon, and fortunately for me they were the first publisher to make an offer on my book proposal. I still remember how happy I felt that day, to know that my dream of writing a book was closer to becoming a reality. Even though my dream publisher had made me an offer, my agent was there to guide me through the process of fine-tuning the agreement. It's great to have someone on your side who can look over things and advise you.

When the offer came in from the publisher, my agent suggested that I have a meeting with the commissioning editor who had sent the offer. During that meeting, the editor said something that that resonated with me, something that I kept thinking back to throughout the project. She said that when someone opens the book, she wants it to feel like a breath of fresh air. And in a way that completely describes the way I was imagining the book myself. And as soon as I heard her say that, it made me feel that I really wanted to work with her, as well as wanting to be part of that publishing house.

JR on writing a book proposal

After I met my agent, I sent her a prototype book proposal I had been putting together. A book proposal usually includes a one-page cover letter that describes why someone would want to pick up that book and buy it. What does it contain? Who is the target audience? What sets it apart from other books? And why should you be the person to write it? Does the world need another book on desserts and if so, why? A cookbook proposal usually also includes a table of contents, that’s everything that you think should be included in the book, every recipe, the names of the chapters, and some people will even list them in the order you'd like them to appear in the book. So that way, when this lands on an editor's desk, when they pick it up, they can really imagine what your idea for the book is. In my proposal I also wrote a sample chapter opener and five sample recipes with headnotes accompanied by five sample photographs from previous projects that I did. My book proposal ended up being over 30 pages. And then when we were pleased with it, my agent's job was to send it out to different publishers. And that's really the art of a good agent, getting the proposal onto the desks of the really good editors who might want to make your book.

The book proposal I wrote gave me a blueprint for what the book was going to be, and after I signed the contract with the publisher, we refined the book proposal into an actual template for the book.

JR on writing and photographing the book

Once I had a publisher on board, I began working on the manuscript; getting each recipe into the correct format, writing chapter openers and recipe headnotes, while double and triple checking quantities for each recipe were correct, showing my editor samples as I went along. After that, the real editing began and the editor went through the entire manuscript, working closely with me for several months to get everything in good shape.

After the manuscript was submitted, we had to find the perfect photographer for the project. At the time, Ireland was in the middle of a lockdown due to the pandemic, and it therefore made sense to have an Irish photographer. Immediately I knew who I wanted it to be, the acclaimed Irish photographer Cliodhna Prendergast, but I knew Cliodhna had not shot a cookbook before. So I reached out to her and asked if she was interested. Cliodhna had photographed the desserts I had made in the past and I really liked the way she captured each dish. I was thrilled when she wanted to do it and I proposed her to the publisher and they unanimously approved her for the project and we got to work.

Many cookbooks will get all the photography done in one long shoot over about two weeks in a studio. There might be a prop stylist, a food stylist, a photographer, and the author would often be on site too during the shoot, and they would work through all the photos for the book day after day. But I couldn't do that because I was working full time in the pastry kitchen at Ballymaloe. Instead, we broke the photoshoot into seven different sessions ranging from one day to four days, over the course of four months. This had the added benefit of allowing us to cook seasonally, capturing fruit, herbs and flowers all at their best. I cooked each dish myself and with Cliodhna’s help, styled them too. We used props that were around Ballymaloe - many of the plates and bowls were made by friends of mine, and we aimed to get eight of the recipes photographed each day. That's about the max you can do, when things go well. There were so many variables that on occasion certain dishes had to be re-shot several times to get the perfect image, the light might change, if it was a frozen item it might begin to melt, or a few times a dish just didn't come up the way we wanted but we learnt from it and we started over.

Most of the shoot was done during summer and autumn, and we did one final shoot just before Christmas to catch a couple of other items. Everything was photographed in natural light. It was really a labour of love. We shot everything in different locations in Ballymaloe House, depending on the time of year. At one point we were using a space in the attic but later in the year, when the days were shorter, the light would fade too early in that space. We usually took the first shot at 9am and maybe the last shot at 6pm or 7pm.

I’m very proud that I got to cook and style every dish for the book, because the repertoire of recipes is so integral to Ballymaloe that it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it - or doing it anywhere else apart from at Ballymaloe.

Marketing the book

When the photography was submitted and the book designed, focus then shifted to marketing it. Not every cookbook author goes on tour, but my publisher felt that a tour was a good idea. We planned many events between London, Chicago, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ballymaloe and Belfast.

I mostly did what I call a “dessert takeover”, or “counter takeover”, where I put items from the book onto someone else’s menu. An event might have anywhere between 50 and 200 people at it, depending on where it was. We also planned virtual events. For example, I did an event with Zoe Francois and at a much loved book store called Book Larder in Seattle via zoom. The aim was to create a buzz around the book.

It’s really exciting when you meet people who are enthusiastic about the work you do, and being on tour was a dream come true for me. After spending so much time writing the book - and much of the writing process is quite solitary - I was nervous, mostly because I hoped that it would live up to expectations. Now that the book is available in shops, I really hope people enjoy using it and have lots of fun cooking the recipes in it.

What is the best advice you've ever received?

When I was 18, Hazel Allen told me that to be successful in hospitality, there's moments where you have to accept that your work life and your social life would be the same thing. And at the time, I didn't quite understand what she meant. But now I totally do. There's moments where you're working, and it feels like you're socialising and there's moments you're socialising, you realise you're working and I think in the food industry, it's really important to feel okay with that.

What’s your favourite cocktail?

An aviation. It's gin, freshly squeezed lemon juice and Maraschino liquor - sometimes with Creme de Violettes, but I prefer when that's left out. Shaken on ice, served with a lovely cherry in the bottom of the glass. Heaven.

What do you cook for breakfast on your days off?

I usually have a poached egg on buttered toast.

Do you have a favorite kitchen tool or utensil?

Definitely a spatula. I couldn't live without it.

(Beth: the red ones in the kitchen, that type?)

Yes, definitely the long handled rubber spatula. Oh, and my other favourite thing is my E. Dehillerin knife, which is called a mushroom knife. But actually it's the perfect knife in a pastry kitchen for almost any job.

How do you take your coffee?

Strong and often with a drop of cream.

Favourite herb and spice?

Lemon verbena and sweet geranium. And I don't actually have a favourite spice. It depends on what I'm doing, sometimes it's cinnamon other times it's cardamom, so hard to choose a favourite.

You can order JR’s book here, or in find it in good bookshops

Recipe: Panna Cotta with Espresso Jelly

This was one of my favourite things to make at Ballymaloe. You can also replace the sweet espresso with a fruit syrup - we made a rhubarb one recently, and a raspberry one too with leftover syrup from poaching fruit.

Panna Cotta with Espresso Jelly from Ballymaloe Desserts