& DRINK Family recipes are just too good to keep mum T
350g potatoes, cut into 5mm slices A tiny pinch of grated nutmeg 1 sprig of thyme 1 garlic clove, crushed 250ml regular or double cream 125ml milk 25g butter 250g smoked haddock, cut into 1cm pieces 175g leeks, sliced into 5mm half rings 125g black pudding, quartered lengthways then cut into chunks Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Green vegetables or salad, to serve 1800C/Gas mark 4.
Melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the fish, leeks and black pudding and sweat gently to soften for eight to 10 minutes, then season with salt and pepper.
Transfer the fish mix to a one-litre pie dish. Remove the sprig of thyme from the potato and layer the discs of potato over the fish mix in the pie dish. Pour the creamy milk from the saucepan over the potato and fish. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until golden on top and bubbling.
Serve with green vegetables or a green salad. HE world might just be latching on to an idealised Nordic way of life, but chef Rachel Allen has long been fully conversed in it.
Growing up in Dublin, with an Icelandic mum and Irish father, Rachel embraced both cultures, and she’s not surprised all things Scandi have become so popular.
“If it’s not the great Nordic [TV] dramas, it’s the food, or how to be hygge... It’s funny,” says the 44-year-old Cork resident with a laugh.
“I read one of those hygge books recently, and actually I identified with every bit of it. I always feel really at home there,” the mum-of-three notes of Scandinavia. “I’ve always loved the design. I’ve always loved the architecture, the furniture, the fashion, the food.
“I love all the fish and how they use a lot of dill. There’s mild aniseed-y flavours, even liquorice is used in food a lot.
“I love the way they use barley and oats. And baking is something I come back to time and time again. They use quite a lot of cardamom, and I just absolutely adore it. I often find myself sneaking some cardamom and cinnamon into batters.”
Rachel’s mother Hallfridur – a former art student, who was 19 and visiting Dublin for a weekend when she met Allen’s father – was a creative cook, and fused Nordic with Irish standards.
She’d leave comforting Most of us have a soft spot for our mothers’ cooking, and for Rachel Allen, it’s helped inspire her latest cookbook. The Irish chef talks to
about her Icelandic heritage and food as nostalgia casseroles bubbling away in the Aga, and whip up cardamominfused cakes, igniting a young Rachel’s interest in food in the process.
But central as food is to her life, the chef, is dubious about calling herself a ‘foodie’. “When I was growing up, it wasn’t about people being ‘foodies’,” she says. “I was born in the Seventies, it was a different thing then. Mum loved to cook and put food on the table. We didn’t go to farmers’ markets but we always had great food from the butcher down the road, always lovely casseroles and soups. I took it for granted then, and of course, growing up, you realise, ‘Wow, she really did a great job’.”
Now, Rachel celebrates that ‘great job’ in her latest cookbook, Recipes From My Mother.
It also draws on the beloved dishes her friends’ mums passed down to them, from soda breads, to kedgerees and creamy rice puddings, and acknowledges the influence of her mother-in-law, renowned chef Darina Allen, through their years working together at the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School – which is also where Rachel found her calling and met her nowhusband Isaac, after enrolling on a course there at 18, and where she still teaches today.
It was a great opportunity to take a stroll down memory lane.
“It’s funny how food evokes such emotions and memories and nostalgia for people,” she says. “Someone would say, ‘I remember we used to always have stewed plums with custard’, and then I thought, ‘Actually I should be including these lovely recipes as well’. I feel the book is full of memories.”
Fancy cooking up some lovely memories of your own? Here are three recipes from Rachel’s book to try at home...