In honour of Mother’s Day, 5 chefs reveal their favourite childhood recipes
Ross Lewis Michelin-starred chef/proprietor of Chapter One Restaurant, Dublin
My mum’s name is Margaret and, to give you an idea of the kind of person she is, she’s the only woman I’ve ever heard of, at the age of 66 or 67, saying, I’d love to have children again.
She loves kids; she’s very caring and maternal.
She’s a lovely cook and an avid and obsessive gardener, and she’s a real homemaker.
She might drink three glasses of wine a year. Her version of kicking back is looking at the flowers.
She may have a dreadful memory, but can remember every flower put on god’s green Earth.
She’s very dutiful, without being a fussy mother, quite calm; a simple, but beautiful, person.
She was a Welsh farmer’s daughter and I’d have lived on the farm for a couple of years, as a child.
I was always very conscious that it was like a kitchen in a canteen, feeding all the workers.
They put on a café, and did so well they paid for the farm in three years, my mother doing all the cooking.
She gave me her savings to open Chapter One, the princely sum of £10,000 in 1993, when no-one would give me money.
She came up and worked, doing baking, when I opened, but after three weeks she handed in her notice, as we were driving in to work.
She said, “I’m not sleeping in your bedsit anymore, take me to the station, I’m going back to Cork!”
My first walkout!
She’s a great baker. She has a great understanding of food. I still use her recipe for shortcrust pastry; I haven’t found a better one yet.
She’s very strong, resilient, and I think I get some of my determination from her.
Enda McEvoy Michelin-starred chef/proprietor, Loam Restaurant, Galway
My Mum, Philo McEvoy — she always hated Philomena — came from Kilfenora, Co Clare. She grew up on a farm, from a family of 10.
Her mum’s family was from Meath and owned a lot of hotels, in Bettystown, Slane, and Navan, and a hotel in Virginia, Co Cavan.
When she graduated from hotel management, in Cathal Brugha St, she got sent to Virginia to manage the Lake Hotel, where she met my dad.
He owned a shop — the McEvoys have had a corner shop since 1911 — and a farm, with some livestock and polytunnels, where we grew a lot of veg for the market-garden business.
Because she worked from home, there was always coming-and-going.
They were running a shop and a business, and I am the youngest of six kids, so she was a busy woman.
Sunday was the only day the shop closed, and we’d sit down and have a proper family dinner, and that’s the only day she’d have time to cook with us.
I’d remember making apple cakes, messing around with the dough, making shapes, biscuits.
She’s from a generation where food was more about sustenance than pleasure —but she makes the best stuffing!
There’s a soup she makes out of the Christmas dinner turkey bones, finished off with sherry. It is the quintessential family dish for us all.
Mum’s background is still ingrained. She was running hotels when she was 23 and she always inspects my restaurant kitchen, to see if it is clean.
She is a wise woman and she’d have given us plenty of wise words as to how to behave as human beings.
She taught us all humility.
Rory O’Connell, chef/teacher, Ballymaloe Cookery School
Her name was Elizabeth O’Connell. She was a mother of nine.
Our father died a month before my youngest sister was born — he was the love of her life and I believe she mourned him for the rest of her life.
It left her with the business to run and all of us to bring up, yet, somehow, she cooked every day for us. I think it was almost therapy.
She genuinely enjoyed cooking and was very focused on us getting the very best food.
She would encourage us to help with the chores, but she used to actively show us what she was cooking, very pointedly, because, when we left home, we’d have to be doing it for ourselves.
Memories of cooking with her are very happy and precious, but I don’t know if we could have shared a professional kitchen. [Much laughter.]
I think we’d ‘establish our boundaries’ and then we’d be grand — like I do with [Darina Allen], my sister!
My favourite dish of hers was scalloped potatoes, a casserole of beef and beef kidneys, lots of onions and potatoes slowly cooked for about three hours.
It’s the dish we all, any of my brothers or sisters, remember to this day. She’d cook it when we were coming home from boarding school.
From a culinary point of view, she gave me so much. Even how she used to make everything taste so good.
Any time we’d eat out, I’d be thinking, in my stomach and brain, ‘my mother is a better cook, she’d make it taste nicer than this’. She gifted me a palate!
She was a remarkable inspiration: full of goodness, honesty, decency, dignity.
Ireland seemed to be full of widows when I was growing up. There was a loneliness about them, but a beautiful independence about them, as well, and that has stood to all of us.
She devoted her life to all of us.
Gary O’Hanlon, chef, Viewmount House, Co Longford; TV chef, The Restaurant
My mammy, Anne O’Hanlon, (née Gallagher) was from Carrigart, in north Donegal, and she met my dad at a dance. They got married the day before, or after, his 21st.
She used to work for the civil service, but she wanted to rear us herself. She gave up what would have been a very lovely retirement around now, and dedicated her whole life to her kids.
We never had a ton of money, but we never wanted for anything.
She was very strong on school; we had to have a limb falling off before we were left stay at home and we weren’t allowed out until we had the homework done.
She always cooked dinner. Wednesday was always my favourite: homemade barley broth, with meat and potatoes.
To this day, I never appear in Ramelton without mammy having a pot of that ready for me.
She’s quite young, 60 next year, and still fit and healthy, and I’m still very close to her.
We always helped around the house, and while she cooked lovely family dinners, she wasn’t a gourmand, in any sense of the word.
For her, food was always fuel; no airs and graces. And though I crave the mammy dinner, she wouldn’t have been my culinary inspiration, so to speak.
Often, when I’m home, daddy and the boys and my sister tell me get away from the kitchen, cos they like the way she cooks.
We have a great laugh together, in the kitchen.
I’m small, but she’s not even up to my shoulder and I’d be kicking her up the arse and telling her ‘get out the way’ and she’d be waving the wooden spoon and I’d get the shivers.
Neven Maguire, chef/proprietor, MacNean House & Restaurant, Co Cavan, TV chef
Her name was Vera Maguire, (née Donoghue), from Dowra, Co Cavan, and she reared a family of five boys, four girls. A very close family.
I always remember her cooking dinner and us all eating together. She trained in Cathal Brugha St and opened the restaurant, in Blacklion, in 1969. It closed from ’73 to ’89, with the Troubles; the front of the house was bombed twice.
She was also very kind, very caring, and very religious. She had a great faith and that kept her going after dad was killed in a road accident in 1999. She was devastated, and, after that, she focused on the family and grandchildren.
She passed away three years ago.
I worked with her for over 20 years of the 25 years the restaurant has been open, and we never fell out once, through all the struggles with the business.
Baking with her would have been a big thing, starting when I was nine or ten. That’s where I got the love of food.
All the family worked in the restaurant, but I was the only one who stayed in the family business. I was her commis chef.
When I was older, I’d go away on stages and be coming back with new stuff.
It got crazy, at one stage, when I was about 21: kangaroo, alligator, buffalo on the menu, but she would always encourage me in whatever I was doing or trying.
They were very proud of me starting off. I’d won a few competitions, but if I hadn’t the family business to go into, I don’t know what I would have done!
She taught me to respect people and ingredients, to look after your staff and enjoy what you do.
She taught me to be caring, to be kind, to be generous.
