Even though I cook food from all over the world, there are dishes that take me back to a place that’s at my core. Chicken soup, champ – a Northern Irish dish of potato mashed with spring onions, warm milk and copious amounts of butter – and Irish stew. They’re the dishes I grew up with. Eating them is like visiting another country.
There’s a lot of ‘roses round the door’ writing about mothers and grandmothers and what they pass on, especially to those of us who love cooking. I’m sure it’s a straightforward and happy story for some, but for others it’s complicated.
Asma Khan, who owns the London restaurant, Darjeeling Express, has dedicated her new book, Ammu, to her mother. She told me recently that mothers and grandmothers should be recognised and honoured for handing on recipes and knowledge; instead, male chefs imbibe this from the women in their families but rarely credit them. That’s why she has an all-female kitchen, staffed not by chefs but by women who cook Indian ‘home’ food.
Khan started cooking only when she left India for Cambridge, a place where she felt isolated and homesick. She learnt how to cook via letters from home and a notebook she’d kept while growing up. Asma’s love of food developed during a bleak period, helped notes she received from her mother.
There is pain in Nigel Slater’s love of food too. His mum wasn’t a good cook, but she made him buttered toast, an edible hug, something that was in short supply when Nigel’s mum died when he was just nine years old. Nigella Lawson also lost her mother when she was relatively young. As one of her early memories is of standing on a chair dropping lumps of butter into the bowl as her mother made Hollandaise it’s not surprising that cooking is central to her life.
My parents weren’t given to praising their children. It’s not the Northern Irish way, better to ensure your offspring don’t get ‘fancy notions’ about themselves. But a love of food and cooking was encouraged. Once I showed an interest it didn’tmatter how much mess I made, I was given free rein in the kitchen.
