Severe Jam Damage

Something jogged my memory there and it started me thinking about my grandmother and all the wonderful food she used to cook. She was a Wexford woman so she wouldn’t have been holding with that ‘Dublin Coddle’ shite. As a matter of fact, to this DAY I have never eaten coddle. I remember her kitchen as a bright sunny room and always, always smelling of goods things…

■ Blackberry Jam made from blackberries in the back garden. Eaten while still warm from the pot, with the biggest spoon we could find.
■ Colcannon with hot floury spuds and soft curly kale mashed through with tons of butter and salt.
■ Warm Apple tart, with the pastry lattice on top. Even better if the pastry had leaked a little and the apple juices had hardened and crisped on one end of the pie.
■ Sponge Cake with jam and cream dusted with icing sugar.
■ Fairy Cakes for Sunday tea, I remember the table would be crowded with plates of cheese, ham, pickled onions and beetroot and the cakes were off to the side waiting for us to finish. Sometimes the fairy cakes were butterflied with a strip of buttercream icing down the centre.
■ Minced roast beef sandwiches. She had an old fashioned meat mincer the kind that clamped to the side of the table, we had the fear of god put in us that the thing would mangle our fingers if we went anywhere near it. Pink Floyd’s video for ‘The Wall’ where the kids were thrown in the grinder gave me nightmares for years afterwards.
■ Yorkshire pudding a big one that was baked in a pie dish and sliced, it had a spongy sort of texture that was brilliant for sopping up the gravy and juices from the roast.
■ Potato cakes made from leftover boiled potatoes, flour and egg. They were rolled out flat and fried, served up with a scrape of butter.
■ Gravy that was a meal unto itself.
■ Loaves of soda bread that she cooked in a stove so old she knew exactly to the second when the bread would sound hollow.
■ Cabbage rolls stuffed with pork and seasonings. These were made for special occasions, christenings, communions etc.

In addition to all that I can also remember her elbow deep in Guinness and sultanas making the Christmas pudding, or buying silver balls for someone’s wedding cake. I would sit on the counter beside her ‘helping’ although in reality all I did was wait for her to offer me a tasting spoon. No wonder I didn’t eat my dinner.