New book gives food for thought
A vast array of food, from cabbage to poitín, from spice bags to fish fingers feature in a new book from restaurateur and author JP McMahon that celebrates the diverse ingredients and dishes that are have helped shape Ireland. He has included100, but there could have been twice that number, he tells JUDY MURPHY.
When JP McMahon tells his daughters about growing up in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, they look at him in amazement.
He gives a wry laugh as he says among the questions they’ve been known to ask are: ‘Was it very grey when you were growing up? Were ye very poor?’
The McMahons were neither poor nor rich, but anyone who grew up in those times will know what JP means, even if it’s an alien world to Heather and Martha, 15 and 12.
This was an Ireland where Angel Delight, Jif Lemon and Viennetta ice-cream became family staples as housewives, including JP’s mother, Carol, embraced the new convenience foods that were arriving on supermarket shelves. Ireland had joined the EEC in 1973, while US and UK TV programmes were becoming widely available, so change was happening fast.
JP recalls that era and more in his new book, An Irish Food Story: 100 Foods that Made Us, a beautiful production which was launched last Friday night in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.
The list of 100 kicks off with Angel Delight, before he goes on to explore fish, bread, milk, potatoes, meat and the usual suspects you might expect to find in such a compendium.
But Angel Delight deserves its place, he says. So too does the more recent phenomenon, the Spice Bag, according to the Michelin-starred chef, whose daughters love this Irish take on Asian Food.
An Irish Food Story is not a book about ‘Irish food’, rather it’s about foods that have been or are currently popular here, and that’s an important distinction for JP.
“Food in Ireland can take in any food. I’ve never eaten a spice bag but the girls get them at the weekend”, he says of the chicken-chips-peppers mix which is heavy on spices and, which, according to RTÉ reporter Liam Gerraghty, was created in a Chinese takeaway in Dublin.
This book evolved from JP’s eight years writing a weekly food column for The Irish Times, which, gave him “the creative freedom to investigate food in Ireland and Irish food”.
Irish food is what he has focused on in his flagship restaurant Aniar, winning the Michelin star and many other awards along the way.
Understandably, Aniar is what he’s best-known for but JP is curious about all food and his tastes are broad.
After work or a couple of drink, he’ll enjoy chips from a nearby fast food outlet on Dominck Street, Vinnie’s.
“They’re made there and very good,” he says. He also loves the pizza slice topped with bolognese sauce from Pizza Napoli in the city’s Cross Street. His daughters share his love of the pizza there and he says the bolognese slice is an example of how food is constantly evolving. Popular here in Galway, it’s highly unlikely you’d get it in Italy.
While some people are surprised when he expresses a fondness for these places, it makes sense. There’s nothing wrong with convenience food if it’s properly made, he says.
In the book, JP references the toasted sandwich served in the Bunch of Grapes pub on the city’s High Street. Plain food, done well, says a man who grew up on plain food.
His family lived in Maynooth where his father Gerard lectured in the university and when the children would visit Gerard’s parents in Dublin, they’d be taken to McDonald’s for a treat.
Those grandparents lived in Mount Merrion and, at the time, a new shopping centre had opened nearby where the fast-food outlet had a base. Going there was a cool thing to do, he recalls.
Pictured: JP McMahon at the launch in Charlie Byrne’s with, from left: Vinny Browne, Aoife Qualter, publisher Kirsten Jenson and Noreen Browne. PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.