My Cooking Influence - Dad

I lost my dad last weekend and I don’t quite know what to do, what to say or how to feel. My days since have been spent fleeting between immense pride, unexplainable and unparalleled pain, anger, guilt and just about every emotion in between that spectrum. It’s such a strange time, lockdown, and now this, has resulted in a real fuck-shit of a situation. It is still very early on in this and I don’t want to necessarily rush on to the next feeling or emotion. Instead I’m quite content to let each one wash over and stay as long as it deems fit. This is my way of remembering and coping.

One thing I will be forever grateful for is the massive influence he had on my love for cooking. He taught me the beauty of fresh produce. The nose-twitching sensation of a good stinky cheese. On holidays to the Pyrenees we’d make packed lunches consisting of spring onions the size of your fist, eaten raw with mouthfuls of Ossau-Iraty cheese and the best bread I’ve ever tasted. I vividly remember those holidays being full of incredible food. Going to the most amazing, hidden, tiny little restaurants up in the mountains, plates of wild mushrooms laden with enough garlic to ensure holiday romances were never on the cards for me. God knows how he found those amazing gems, I’ve always wanted to return, but perhaps they’re best kept as a secret. Garlic seemed to be a theme for us. One of my favourite memories was having raw garlic eating competitions with him in the kitchen. We’d go clove for clove until one of us gave in. At the same time I was having French tutoring at school. During one session we were learning about french foods and my tutor, Guillaume, kept referring to this mystical food ‘ail’. I couldn’t figure out what he was referring to as he waved his hand in front of his mouth and laughed. The mystery food suddenly became obvious when I got home that night and my Mum asked “Have you been doing another one of those garlic eating contests with your Dad? Your breath stinks of it!”. I was very single at school.

He encouraged my creativity and curiosity in the kitchen. If I saw a dish being made on TV or an ingredient I hadn’t seen before on our Friday night food shops, my shopping list requests were met without question, bar the odd eyebrow being raised at checkout when I had snuck items in unbeknownst to him. He also gave me such freedom to cook what I wanted, which expanded into my own school packed lunches. By the time I was 13 or 14 it wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to be taking a chicken Kiev sandwich to school accompanied by a homemade salad containing, amongst other things, a whole mozzarella ball, half a pack of streaky bacon, pine nuts, all drowned in my first attempts at a vinaigrette. This was often accompanied by a four pack of Ripples, an apple (for balance), all washed down with a bottle of Copella. Yes really. Not only was I single at school, I was a little chubby.

His cooking style was rustic, but he always, always had plates piled with veg, with a layers of onion and garlic as the base (getting that inulin innit) and laced with herbs and spices. He, much like my brother, sister and I, didn’t take criticism of his cooking very well either. Not all my cooking habits I’ve inherited have been good! We were pescatarian for much of my childhood until Dad became interested in the Blood Type diet and so almost overnight we began to eat red meat, which was quite the adjustment for a young me. I remember with a crystal clear memory my first experience of red meat being a Beef Wellington, so rare it nearly walked off the plate towards me. Bacon on the other hand, I took to like a pig in shit.

For the majority of the time I knew Dad, food and the process of cooking was almost a spiritual experience, a time for him to either be quiet and with his own thoughts, or to blare out some Van Morrison sipping on a cold Grolsh or Budvar, with a handful of salty cashews, dancing around the kitchen. It’s hard to explain to people, but I too find cooking to be my form of meditation, an opportunity a few times a day to disappear off into my own world, transported to a place by the smells, flavours and textures only a good dish can take you to. Which is why I don’t mind spending an hour cooking breakfast or even longer for dinner, much to the annoyance of Tanya my fiancé. When I cook I don’t have to speak, I can just muddle along in my own time and explore as I see fit, without explanation. Growing up I often perceived this quiet time as Dad being in a grump (quite often he was!), but as I’ve grown older and as I come to the rapid realisation that I am becoming my father (!!!) I realise they weren’t all grumps, but instead perhaps his opportunity to just be, and not have to speak. And that is why I love to cook. I’m not sure who, if any, will read this but it will at least form a part of my memory, my tribute to my Dad. Something I can read back in years to come, a cold beer in one hand, a handful of salty cashews in the other, laughing at yet another win for me in the raw garlic eating stakes against my kids. Cheers Dad, thanks for everything. X