Donal Skehan
The celebrity chef explains why pancakes are perfect for beginners and why he has swapped bacon sandwiches for activated charcoal What did your mother make you? My mum was all about the classics when we were growing up. Roast chicken was a Sunday tradition in our house, but my resounding memory of childhood dinners will always be Irish stew. Whenever the weather turned cold, I remember coming home to a kitchen with steamed-up windows, which meant the stew had gone in the oven a couple of hours earlier, just in time for us to eat when we arrived home from school. The meal you will always remember?
I was in Sant’Angelo in Colle in Italy, and we were filming for one of the first big international TV travel shows I did for Fox International. The series,
Grandma’s Boy, was all about cooking with Italian grandmothers, but this particular little village was the mecca of Italian
nonnas, and they put on the most epic feast right in the heart of the village, overlooking the rolling vineyards. Your defining food experience? My first trip to south-east Asia. Growing up, Irish food wasn’t my passion — instead, I loved cooking with Asian ingredients and exploring different Asian cuisines through cookbooks and TV shows, in my mum’s kitchen. Travelling to south-east Asia, my world just opened up. What’s the first dish you cooked? I think pancakes were the first thing I learned to make. They are a good recipe for any beginner, because you can make them for dessert, or top them with ham and cheese for a savoury twist, served with salad. I think I specifically remember them because we always celebrated Pancake Tuesday, and I have memories of helping my mum with the batter, and then getting to handle a frying pan for the first time. What is your comfort food? I have a recipe for three-cheese lasagne, which is the go-to comfort food recipe in our house. When my son was born, my wife Sofie’s first request was that lasagne. What is your hangover cure? It used to be a dirty bacon sambo with ketchup on white bread, but now it’s coconut water and activated charcoal… I don’t know where it all went wrong! What do you drink? A Whiskey Sour is my go-to drink, but I love Irish cider if I’m in Ireland, and I can track it down. Cockagee Cider is fantastic. You can only eat three things for the rest of your life... Ceviche, Thai som
tum salad, dan dan noodles — I’m all about big flavours! How important is food to you? There is a saying that you shouldn’t turn your hobby into your career, and in my case, that’s exactly what I did. It takes one incredible meal — those perfect moments of flow with ingredients, or a slow Saturday tinkering in the kitchen and serving up a feast for my family — to remind myself it means just about everything to me. What’s always in your kitchen? Onions. Even when I don’t know what’s for dinner, slicing onions and frying them in a pan is often the best starting point. What’s your perfect family meal? I love meals with no fuss, where a lot of the prep has been done beforehand and then you are left with a great big table of platters, so people can serve themselves. Donal Skehan’s latest book ‘Donal’s Meals in Minutes’ is nominated in the Eurospar Cookbook of the Year category in the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. To vote, see irishbookawards.ie
“When my son was born, my wife Sofie’s first request was for my three-cheese lasagne”
In conversation with Sophie White