When food evokes your memories
The world might just 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, Allen 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.
“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.” Now, Allen 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 Allen found her calling and met her now-husband Isaac, after enrolling on a course there at 18, and where she still teaches today.
“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.”