Nestled on a hill in the West of Ireland, located up the road from Ashford Castle — once home to the famous Guinness family — is our family’s country home. The place where I made, what I consider to be, my first dessert and where I truly fell in love with cooking.
The kitchen has always been the heart of the house — a spot for us to convene in the morning, a breakfast haven where we’d discuss the day’s agenda. The kettle would be the first sound I’d hear — boiling away in the early hours ready for the numerous wake-up teas and coffees. And then, of course, second cups and maybe even thirds. There’d be assortments of muesli and Weetabix prepared, a bounty of fresh fruit, and a generous mound of softened butter awaiting its fate on slices of hearty brown bread. Clonakilty sausages and rashers would sizzle in the oven, accompanied by the creaking of the back door as my granddad sought reprieve from the burgeoning smoke. Predictably, the fire alarm in the hallway would chime in, prompting someone to wave a tea towel towards the ceiling, quelling its persistent screams.
Nana was the chef of the family. She would don her floral-coloured apron, and begin to peel the potatoes (a staple of most meals in an Irish household) over the sink. She was a very small lady and an incredible cook. She’d serve them steamed — lathered in butter and salt — and served alongside salmon baked with lemon slices in tin foil, fresh broccoli and green beans. Everything was cooked in butter. That’s the star ingredient to any dish, isn’t it? A lot of fat and salt. It was always a pleasure to eat her food. Her roast potatoes were unrivalled. Every Christmas my mum would tell my dad to make them “just like Nana used to.” And every year it was never truly the same as Nana’s. Her roasting ingredient, I suspect, was duck fat. But still, never the exact same flavour or the same fluffiness on the inside. Nana just knew how to do it better.
After dinner was dessert. Freshly cut strawberries, a pint of double cream on the side, a pot of sugar in case the berries weren’t sweet enough. Sometimes there were little meringues to add in. And, of course, the blackberries, freshly picked from the bush. You would follow the small steps down a steep hill at the bottom of the garden and there it was. Thick and thorny, the lengthy branches overlapped each other and along the very tip — ripe blackberries were always in abundance.
That same kitchen was where I made my first dessert, a simple vanilla panna cotta. I understood the basics of cooking, but I never did it myself. I had grown up with a nanny at home who took care of all the cooking. I just had to sit at the table and finish my food.
I towered over my under-5-foot Nan as she taught me how to hydrate gelatin. She showed me how to slice open a vanilla pod with a small sharp knife, and scrape the seeds out. The smell of vanilla was pungent. I followed her as she combined the milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla into a saucepan, bringing it to a gentle simmer — not a boil — before removing it from the heat. She added in the gelatin, giving it a stir with a long wooden spoon. My memory doesn’t serve me well, I made this simple dessert nearly ten years ago, but I remember those freshly-picked blackberries being made into some sort of compote, or used as a topping. A lip-puckering sour berry to accompany a creamy, sweet dessert.
Gelatin doesn’t look easy to use, but the recipe is done in about ten minutes. The biggest drawback is the several hours spent waiting for the cream to set. But it was always worth it. Once done, we would all dive in, one spoonful after another, and devour it in under three minutes.
We served them in mini dessert glasses. It felt fancy to eat them right from the glass. The ting, scrape scrape, ting of spoons grating the edge of the glass as everyone attempted to clear every bit of panna cotta from bowl. My dad would set his dish down and say, “Well that was very nice, thank you.” He’d slouch in his chair, a wineglass precariously perched on the edge of the table, his belly full from the family meal.
Helping make that dessert started my food journey. It was the catalyst for so many other dishes, like my first savoury meal — a basic bow tie pasta with poached salmon and a mango salsa. Do these pair together at all? I don’t think so, but I remember constantly tasting the pasta, worried that it was undercooked. Now, I can cook easily from a recipe and more often than not, I make stuff up as I go.
When my mum tries a loaf of orange cake, she wonders how I get it to be so soft and fluffy. I tell her: By carefully stirring the batter and using Greek yogurt. She shakes her head and tells me I’ve got Nana’s cooking gene. I blush. It’s an honour to be compared to someone so dear to me, and yet so talented.