There's the story about the man from Fermanagh who found a position as a butler in a big house in Dublin. He starched his collar, polished his boots and spent late nights reading up on etiquette and acquainting himself with the mysterious peculiarities of his new job. On his first day at work, everything was going extremely well until he suddenly threw open the drawing room doors and announced with great pride - "Pardon me Sir, dinner is boiled."
And that story by way of introduction to my culinary hinterland - a place where the traditional approach to food was: if you want to eat something make sure you boil the hell out of it first. All you needed was a large pot of boiling water and a certain patience. Almost miraculously, just about anything, animal or vegetable, could be rendered edible by extensive boiling, and if you really wanted to spice things up a bit you could always throw in a bit of salt. Or maybe a large onion if it was Christmas. The other option was to fry. You could even fry things that you had already boiled and this was especially reassuring. Of course, there was no talk of cholesterol then. Indeed, this was also an era before Gloria Hunniford (for I believe it was her) invented the term "Ulster Fry" - something which has become yet another source of Northern pride. It is a somewhat exclusive meal with dangerous macho possibilities, and the greatest fry of all is the one that the stranger cannot eat. In our pre-Gloria days in Fermanagh, the Ulster Fry was known simply as "your breakfast".
School dinners introduced me to watery mince and semolina. On Fridays it was fish-cakes or fish fingers and spuds full of duke-the-beetles. As we picked at our plates we ruminated glumly on the appropriateness or otherwise of saying Grace and consequently many of us experienced our first rifts with the church. It was, after all, quite impossible to give thanks for Spam. The whole concept, even in the 1970s, seemed to be one of air-raid shelters and rationing. If only, we prayed, some reckless bandit might smuggle us in some ham from Bundoran! A big lump of boiled ham from Bundoran. Bless us O Lord . . .
When I went to university I had to learn quickly how to boil for myself and I rapidly became accomplished at all its disciplines. I confess that I experienced a certain pride as I poked at my spuds with a knife and waited knowingly for them to slide off the blade - perfectly done. I developed into something of a brainbox when it came to understanding when exactly a spud was boiled and I felt that to know such a thing was to know everything. Then suddenly the world went wobbly and I took the soup. I was 18 years old before I tasted my first curry chip as I walked home in the rain on a dark Belfast Friday night. Before I knew it I was ordering deliveries from the Chinese on a regular basis. Sweet and sour pork. Egg fried rice. Cashew nuts. Prawn crackers. Next thing I knew I was on the pizzas with all the pepperoni and the pineapple. It was only a matter of time before I was at the garlic. The damage had been done and soon they opened a delicatessen in my home town.
Those student days and the mandatory summertime wandering around the railway stations of Europe ruined me entirely. I began to cook with chilli, tarragon and basil and all manner of fancy catchpenny materials far from where I was reared. I even started on the olives. I was a shameful disgrace to my ancestors - heavy consumers of salted bream who would have considered something like coriander to be in the same league as opium. I was treated with great suspicion by various relations.
Even so, I blarged on in my quest for culinary knowledge. In London I took to the Japanese food. In California, I was introduced to Thai. Back home I was constantly ordering from the Indian - balti chicken, sag aloo and nan. And if my meal did not contain some kind of exotic spice I didn't want to know. I was a citizen of the world now. No more Spam. No more fish-cakes. I was Hungry Spice and I reeked of garlic.
Only in the Stag's Head would race memory ever get a hold of me and I would go once more for the bacon and cabbage. It made me feel wholesome, centred and well intentioned. But then I'd watch some cookery programme - Ken Hom with his Wok, Keith Floyd with his wine, and I'd be at it again. Pouring oil in the pan and chucking in anything that was left in the fridge. I was frantic and half-mad and began to believe that I lived in Lousiana - existing for months on what I believed (mistakenly) to be jambalaya.
Anxious guests were regularly treated to my famous chicken gumbo which was a scary mixture of my own design perfected in cold student dives. I even made it for the visiting parents years later and couldn't help noticing that the mother insisted on doing the cooking herself for the rest of the weekend. I was stung of course, but at least I had my first proper meal in six months.
Truth be told, I'm not much of a cook. I'm a bit of a one note samba and if something can't be prepared in a wok then I'm afraid you'll have to eat elsewhere. Having said that, I have an impressive horde of noodles from the Asia Market and a cupboard full of spices that would take the eye out of your head. At least the kitchen smells exotic. The problem is, however that I have no discipline whatsoever when it comes to preparing the food. Any kind of precision reminds me of chemistry class and I'd much rather enjoy myself and throw in my spectacular ingredients with a certain abandon. This is unwise of course, but it certainly feels good to shower the pan with herbs, pour in another dash of oil, grind in the pepper or crush another garlic clove.
And please don't ask me to slow down, be patient or be careful. This is one of the few pleasures I have left - to charge around my kitchen like a mad alchemist in a fragrant storm of chilli flakes and steam. If cookery really is the new rock 'n' roll then I'm at the point where I only know a couple of chords but nevertheless I'm jamming along with great enthusiasm. I'm throwing all the right shapes and I'm making one hell of a racket. It just so happens that I'm slightly out of tune. How's your gumbo?
John Kelly is a writer and broadcaster.