The Menu: These are the inadvertent food lessons I learned from my mother

Patricia ‘Pat’ McNamee, née McDonald, mother of food columnist Joe McNamee.

Tomorrow, March 30, is Mother’s Day. Today, March 29, is my own mother’s birthday, her 93rd. She is a remarkable woman but let me first tell you of a time she rang up in the huffiest of huffs. She had heard me interviewed on a podcast. Though I praised her highly, I had referred to her as a ‘war criminal in the kitchen’. I chuckled — after all, her favourite joke, whenever I cook for her, is to say “I taught you everything you know”.

“You always received a nutritionally balanced diet,” she harumphed. “True,” I replied, divining discretion in brevity. “And you never went hungry.”

A full belly isn’t always true satiation, but I diplomatically conceded that point too. Actually, I may have nodded, less effective over the phone. “It’s just,” I said, “cooking was never really one of your … passions.”

My mother has led a very interesting life. Her own grandfather, probably fleeing the rigid moral restrictions of his Scots Presbyterian upbringing, came to Ireland and started what eventually became Ireland’s funfair dynasty. Education was highly valued. During term time, she and her siblings were packed off to posh boarding schools. 

During holidays, they travelled the highways and byways of Ireland in barrel-topped wagons, setting up the show in every village and town. A natural bookworm, she longed to go to university but had to settle for nursing, further specialising in ophthalmology, occupational health nursing, and midwifery, because she loved ‘studying’. 

She took a job in Naples for several years in the 1950s. She published two novels, earning enough to buy a house. Then she married my father and encountered a saucepan for the first time.

With his teacher’s salary and no mortgage, they began well but his health problems triggered a gradual slide downwards into penury. That era furnished my most abiding memories of growing up in a house without flavour.

Mince was cheap and versatile. We all know spag bol, lasagne, and shepherd’s pie. She didn’t. She once won a competition writing a snappy slogan for Bisto but was content to instead boil mince with a little water, turning it from pink to grey. We ate it every single day. Then, hallelujah, she found a recipe for ‘hamburgers’: mince, raw egg, diced onion, breadcrumbs; no bun, no sauce, but still rapturously received. After a few months, we petitioned for a return to grey watery mince. 

We had roast chicken on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and a handful of other Sundays throughout the year. ‘Roast’ suggests crisp, golden skin but hers was cooked barely north of salmonella; pale, glistening, like the face of an overweight smoker on the verge of a stroke. I at least learned most flavour was in the leg.

There were certain edible pleasures: seasonal tomatoes, cucumbers, beetroot in vinegar, salad cream. OK, all things my mother couldn’t cook into submission; she liked food but marvelled at the kitchen as an alchemist’s lair harbouring mysteries far beyond her ken.

Penury eased off and I too was packed off to boarding school, where even food constituted abuse. I hated it but it took three years of full-blown hysteria before I was released back into the family. My mother had returned to work full-time. My father now wielded the skillet. His own story is for another day but includes 10 years of post-war meandering through Southeast Asia that marked his palate.

I remember shopping with him for Medjool dates, coffee beans, and cinnamon sticks in a mysterious little emporium in London’s Canning Town. When we lived in his homeland of Scotland, he once, just once, made delicious fudge and wonderful toffee, chewy enough to extract milk teeth. He made a curry before curries were a thing and it included banana. 

But these were sporadic epicurean episodes. When he became ‘chef’, the deep fat fryer was all he required to churn out Findus crispy pancakes, frozen chips, and cocktail sausages, perfect fodder for his teenage tribe. It was only when I left home, that I discovered real food, real flavour.

My mum has given me so much. She showed me an unfettered imagination fertilised by books is the most rewarding playground of all and while laughter was always mandatory, the only lesson she ever drummed home hard was on how to love in boundless measure, most especially family. And, I guess, in her own peculiar way, she taught me how to truly appreciate good food. Happy Mother’s Day, Mum.

Irish Food Awards

Paddy’s Day generally kicks off the hospitality season for rural restaurants that close for a winter break but it is also the opening day for entries for Blás na hÉireann, the Irish Food Awards.

Now in its 18th year, this annual celebration of the food and drink of the 32 counties offers early bird discounted rates for entries until April 2, closing deadline on May 15.

irishfoodawards.com

Today’s Special

If butter is my one true religion, then Abernethy Butter from Co Armagh is one of the most sacred rites of all.

Compound butters are tricky to get right, too heavy a hand trampling all over Irish butter’s elemental finesse, but the marriage of Abernethy Butter with Black Garlic (about €4.50) is truly heaven-sent as complex and potent sweet umami flavours bow down before the sumptuous butter’s demure and creamy purity.

abernethybutter.com