Taste for LIFE

Yvonne Melinn’s culinary leanings

What was your favourite childhood meal?

My mom’s lasagne and home-made garlic bread with tomato, cucumber and onion salad. I made it for my kids in lockdown and it’s still my favourite lasagne.

What is the meal you will always remember?

I always remember the food I ate and even what I was wearing — odd! I particularly recall being in Diwali with my family — it’s a great Indian restaurant where we’ve have had a lot of loud nights. Setting my thumb on fire with a flaming sambuca was memorable. Classic line from my sister: ‘Yvonne, I think your thumb is on fire.’ The wine ice bucket was beside me, so my thumb went in there and the drinking continued.

“Classic line from my sister: ‘Yvonne, I think your thumb is on fire’”

What was your defining food experience?

I remember my dad bringing home a Chinese takeaway and tasting a proper Chinese curry for the first time — the excitement! And eating paella for the first time on holidays as a kid — I will never forget that flavour. I loved it and all the presentation that went with it, and having to share it. Whoever eats quickest, gets most — our motto growing up.

What’s the first dish you ever cooked?

A terrible brown sponge that looked like a pancake. I think I was seven or eight. There is photographic evidence: me and my bowl hairdo and my brown cake. I was so proud of myself.

Nuts. I crave nuts constantly — roasted, salted, honey-glazed. Just gimme nuts!

Wine — all colours. Rosé is my favourite, then red, then white, and I’ve been developing a taste for gin since lockdown. I also love an ice-cold beer with crisps.

What is the most appetising smell in the world?

Garlic cooking in butter with prawns or mushrooms.

Easy: I put some chorizo and an egg in a ramekin, cook them in the microwave for a minute, and then put them in a fresh white roll or on toast with loads of Encona hot sauce. I might also eat a giant tomato — I’m never sure why I crave them when I’m hungover.

I eat it like an apple.

If you could only eat three things for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Tomato ricotta bruschetta; all types of cheese; and a packet of cheese and onion crisps, washed down with some delicious wine.

You can go anywhere and have anything to eat with any one person. Where, what and who?

I’d go to Lake Como in Italy with my husband, Paul, and we’d eat tomato and mozzarella salad with a bottle of rosé. That was our plan for our 20th wedding anniversary, but 2020 has been a strange old year! Anywhere we are together, having a laugh and eating and drinking, is good enough for me, though.

Paul’s cauliflower soup. It raises so many questions: Should the soup be brown? Should the house smell like there has been a fire? How do you burn soup? He takes a slagging for this fail, but he does cook a fabulous crab risotto and his pulled pork is a winner. He needs to work on his cheeseboard, though.

Find Yvonne Melinn on Instagram @ystyleireland