I've eaten truffle risotto in the Byerley Turk restaurant at the K Club, in Co Kildare, and if I could I would have bottled the aroma from the black flecks dotted all over the steaming dish of creamy heaven.
I've had milk-fed lambs' liver that melted in the mouth at Mount Juliet, in Co Kilkenny, and lobster to die for at Shanks, in Co Down. I've had a seven-course Thai banquet in Bangkok and chomped escargots in the two-star Le Gavroche, in London. And still some of my most memorable meals were around my mother's wooden table in the kitchen of 8 Sandymount Green.
I still don't know how she did it, conjuring up main courses and afters seven days a week for eight children from a budget of virtually nothing. On Fridays it was always fish and chips, and even though we lived a few doors from Borza's (aka the best chipper in Dublin) she often made it completely from scratch. Monkfish was cheap then, which is why she'd get nubby little cubes of the fish, cover them in breadcrumbs or batter and cook them for just the right amount of time in the deep-fat fryer. When it wasn't monkfish it was eel. We'd take turns to cut the potatoes into chips, and she'd produce bowl after bowl of the golden sticks, crunchy on the outside, perfectly fluffy in the middle. My cousins came over from Liverpool once and were amazed. "We didn't know chips came from potatoes," they said.
Mince was another cheap ingredient, so it got transformed into many things. My favourite was her meat loaf, seasoned with Aromat, which nobody seems to use any more. It would do for sandwiches at school the next day. The girl at the desk beside yours would pretend to be disgusted at the meaty smell, but when nobody was looking she'd ask for a bite. Mince meant shepherd's pie, shot through with sweet carrots and smothered with Heinz tomato ketchup, because no other kind would do. It meant home-made hamburgers in toasted baps, with cheddar cheese melted under the grill - all smothered with salad.
The eight of us, mother making nine, were seated around the table on the dot at 6pm. It didn't matter what obstacle course we were creating in the garden or what crabs we were collecting on the strand; we were around the table at 6pm or else. Her oxtail soup put hairs on your chest. Her Sunday dinners were - still are - legendary. There was always a piece of pork, with sausage-meat stuffing, as well as a chicken or a bit of lamb, with fresh mint sauce, accompanied by the fluffiest Yorkshire puddings known to mankind. We had lamb shanks when they cost 50p from the butcher, in the days before they started showing up in fancy restaurants.
Not everything she gave us was successful. She got the recipe for, ahem, "Indian whiting surprise" from Bord Iascaigh Mhara, in a fish-cooking competition she entered but didn't win. It had the weirdest collection of ingredients, including mayonnaise, pineapple, curry powder and cheese. It was the only dish I ever remember any of us grumbling about. Her
chicken curries were better. Who ate all the pies? We did. Sausage or chicken or rabbit enclosed in the best pastry, made with real butter when she eventually graduated from using margarine and lard.
For afters she made blackberry crumbles and apple tarts and poached fruit and ice cream and jelly and a punch in the belly and a chase around the table. There was steamed rhubarb from the back garden with custard, and there was my sister Rachael's favourite, the almond extravaganza that is Linzer torte. When we had friends round for parties she'd make pizzas that even the Borzas would have approved of and Scotch eggs that bore no resemblance to the soggy, tasteless things you can find on delicatessen counters.
Unfortunately, in my terrible teens I went through a phase of turning my nose up at my mother's cooking. Refusing to eat dinner and sneaking out later to the chipper with money stolen from her purse. It seems a shame when I think of all those meals I never finished because of an intense desire to consume a batter burger.
As with every great dining experience, the food at 8 Sandymount Green was great, but it was never just about the food. It was about family. Rowing over the last roast potato. Crying over spilt milk. Trying to get out of doing the washing-up. They knocked down our house in Sandymount a few years ago, but I'm still fond of other places in Dublin where the food might be great but it's never just about the food. Sherie's on Abbey Street, Mackerel on Grafton Street, Gruel on Dame Street, the Market Bar on Fade Street. And you can always find me around a certain wooden table in Windmill Lane. Because she still makes the best Sunday dinner in the world.
