Giving hospital food an injection of goodness

JOYCE Timmins did something that many of us thought impossible. She made hospital food not just palatable but actually delicious. When she was executive chef at the world’s oldest maternity hospital, The Rotunda in Dublin, she became a Twitter sensation.

‘I never set out to be a chef,’ she says. ‘I drifted into a course in Crumlin College and absolutely loved it. Then I moved on to Cathal Brugha Street where Kevin Thornton was my mentor. He got me going on pastry.’

She would remain a pastry chef for many years, initially in hotels around Ireland, then at Raymond Blanc’s legendary Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire. ‘It was tough,’ she recalls. ‘I was the only non-French female in the kitchen, but Raymond was amazing. I remember he took the pastry team to the Roux brothers’ [three-star Michelin] Waterside Inn in 1998. I had never experienced food like it.’

Being a home bird, she applied for a job at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud. ‘But I heard nothing,’ she says.

‘Raymond asked me what I was planning, so I told him. He made a call. Two hours later I’d got the job in Dublin.’

After Guilbaud’s and spells in other kitchens, she took two years out when her daughter, now 18, arrived. Then came nine years at Expresso Bar on St Mary’s Road off Baggot Street, most of that time as head chef.

‘I think I’d spent too long on pastry,’ she says. ‘It was great to get into the hot kitchen. We were ahead of the trends, going to London, taking inspiration from the likes of Ottolenghi. Bono would come in, and Johnny Ronan and Louis Walsh. I said at the time we were Eddie Rocket’s for the rich.’

After other jobs and study, she saw an ad for executive chef at The Rotunda and jumped at it. ‘They wanted a few changes, which was good,’ she says. ‘But it was challenging, very unionised.’

What The Rotunda got was a revolution. Hospital food is usually cooked the day before it’s served. ‘That’s how you get that particular smell of hospital food,’ says Joyce. ‘We changed that. Food was cooked and served fresh. The smells were of lovely roasts and spices and herbs. I remember making a Thai red curry with cucumber pickle on the side.

IWAS using the same veg and the same meat as every HSE hospital got, just giving the chefs a sense of pride in what we were cooking. It’s about attitude, not money. I loved it, but I knew I didn’t want the job for the next 30 years.’ And so she moved to Marymount, a nursing home in West Dublin. ‘I never dreamed I’d end up cooking in an old people’s home,’ she says. ‘But I love the ethos and the sense of being in someone’s home and my lovely residents.’ Many of the people for whom Joyce and her team now cook have dementia and dysphagia, because they have forgotten how to swallow. Food has to be puréed. ‘I try to make it as nice as possible,’ she says. ‘I give them as many taste sensations as possible so I might do a lamb tagine with honeyed beetroot and zesty chickpeas, but all puréed.’ Joyce Timmins speaks with such tenderness and affection for the people she feeds, she seems to have found a very special and satisfying niche in the world of food.