Convenient truths

A scouting trip to France led to a eureka moment for Paul Flynn when he abandoned crispy pancakes for fancy chicken. He tells Joe McNamee about a new challenge

WE ARE the forgotten ones, the lost generation sandwiched in between the old traditionalists wielding their cabbage and hairy bacon and the nouveaux foodies with their Italian truffle butter and tonka beans. We are the convenience food generation, half-raised and ill-served by a diet of crispy pancakes, Bird’s trifle, Angel Delight, Vesta curries, Smash potato, Pot Noodles, frozen chips and whatever other Frankenstein’s monster the boys in the lab could conjure up.

Convenience food gained its first foothold in Ireland in the late 1970s. Back then, it wasn’t an indicator of low social status: save rare dissenters, it was widely viewed as the upside of progress. Advertisers encouraged mothers not to waste hours cooking, the better to spend the saved time doing some “real mothering”.