Beautiful Affair. Mike Hanrahan

kitchen was the hub of Hanrahan life. The half door was constantly open for all to call and say hello. She always sat by the range while Micky sat at the table with his tiny transistor radio waiting for the latest result from Leopardstown. It was a great room for chat, food, music and gossip, and over the years a lot went on in that small confined space around the kitchen table with its ever-present pot of hot tea.

      MOTHER

       She’s an angel, my angel, she moves me, she sees the child in me

       Won’t abandon me, my angel

      – ‘Angel’, Someone Like You (1994)

      My mother was taken from school in her very early teens and sent to work at Fawl’s on O’Connell Street in Ennis. Fawl’s was a pub, shop and tea importer also known as the Railway Bar. Large tea chests arrived from Dublin and the tea was bagged for sale. When we were babies our playpen was one of those tea chests. Dad fixed a bicycle tyre round the top for safety and all was going well for a couple of years until my brother Kieran worked out a way to topple the chest and crawl to freedom. In the evenings after the long journey home, my mother helped with household chores and tended to the needs of her four brothers. I have difficulty understanding why her parents chose that path for her, cutting short her education at such a young age, but she never discussed it much with any of us, and explained it away as being a different time. She never really spoke much at all about her childhood, but her photographs always show a smiling, beautiful young girl. She met my father when they were both young, fell in love and spent the rest of their lives falling deeper and deeper into that love.

      My mother and I share a great passion for food and for many years we exchanged various tips over the phone or on my short visits home. I never left home without a plate of her luscious scrambled eggs and toast to set me on my early-morning journey back to Dublin. She was a brilliant cook and baker. After years of trying, I finally managed to record some of her baking recipes.

      ‘Right, Mum, are you ready to give up those recipes?’

      ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘So, Mother, your bread recipe – that brown one we all loved so much …’ I switched on the Dictaphone. She eyed it suspiciously.

      ‘I’m not talking into that yoke, Mike.’ I quickly found a pen and opened my copy book. I was very excited; my mother was about to give up the family’s secret recipes.

      ‘Well, for the brown, I get a fist or two of plain flour; a fist of the brown flour; a fist of bran; pinch of salt; a good pinch of baking soda – not too much, because that sometimes turns it a bit yellow although it never stopped ye all from eating it. I suppose it’s all really down to practice. After a while you get to know the ingredients and the feel of the mix, y’know. Oh yes – I sometimes add a little bit of sugar. Sometimes I might add raisins, or currants, although I never liked using the currants for some reason … I preferred using the larger raisins. And sometimes a pinch of ginger, or allspice. And sure, it really came down to what I had in the cupboard. That’s it.’

      ‘What was wrong with the currants?’

      She dipped her head, grimaced and eyed me over her spectacle rims, ‘Sure I was eating most of them, Mike.’ She continued.

      ‘Well, then you need to mix them all with margarine or butter, half a pound or thereabouts, but I preferred the margarine, and then add an egg. Maybe not a full egg, it’s hard to know, Mike, you just have to judge it. After that I added some sour milk to bring it all together – not too wet, but it can’t be dry either.’

      ‘What happened if you had no sour milk?’

      ‘Well … if I had no sour milk, I would add a drop of vinegar to the good milk and that would sour it over about ten minutes. Did I mention not to use a full egg?’

      ‘Why did you bake the bread in a frying pan?’

      ‘Well, it was an old frying pan, and your father knocked off the handle for me as I thought it would make a good baking tray. It did – I used the same one for years and years. I’d butter the pan, put the paper at the bottom, pour the bread mix in and draw a sign of the cross on top with the knife and into the oven for about an hour or thereabouts. I’d turn the bread out then and leave it on top of the range, covered with a damp towel until we were ready to eat it. And that’s it, Mike. Very simple. And shur, ye loved it. Or at least that’s what ye told me, anyway.’

      It was beautiful – not so sure about the simplicity of the recipe, though.

      She went on to talk about her stews, casseroles, her mother’s cheese and that horrible homemade butter – she admonished me once again for my description of the butter. I had a beautiful afternoon with Mum, even though the baking lesson lasted minutes, but it was good to talk food with her. I could not wait to get back to my own kitchen to try out the recipes for myself and translate those fists into grams …

      MY MUM’S RECIPES

      After much trial and error, I managed to translate Mum’s measurements. I’m thinking a fist of flour is about 150g. So, we can take it from there.

      Mum’s brown bread mix

      Makes one loaf

      300g coarse wholemeal flour

      300g plain white flour

      2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

      1 tsp salt

      2 tsp brown sugar

      100g soft margarine or butter

      1 egg

      450ml buttermilk

      Butter, to grease

      1 Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6.

      2 Sieve the white flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and sugar into a bowl containing the brown flour, and mix gently.

      3 Rub in the margarine or butter with your thumb and forefinger to crumb stage.

      4 Beat the egg into the milk. Make a well in the dry mixture and pour in the milk. Bring it all together. It should be a wet mixture.

      5 Butter an old frying pan (if you have one) or a 1lb loaf tin and pour in the mix.

      6 With a knife cut across and down the centre of the loaf, and bake in the oven for 1 hour.

      7 Remove the bread from the oven, turn it in the pan, then cover with a damp tea towel for one hour before serving.

      My mother’s spot of dick

      Makes one loaf

      Mum sometimes omitted the treacle and used a mix of brown and white flour. She preferred the large golden raisins. This recipe is open to any fruit, but the harder dried fruits will benefit from a little soaking before use.

      Butter, to grease

      500g plain white flour

      2 tsp baking powder

      A pinch of nutmeg

      1 tsp salt

      200g coarse brown flour

      100g soft margarine

      1 tbsp treacle (optional)

      1 egg, beaten

      400ml buttermilk

      150g raisins or sultanas

      1 Preheat the oven to 160ºC/140ºC fan/gas 3.

      2 Butter a heavy oven-safe skillet or loaf tin and line it with baking parchment.

      3 Sieve the white flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt into a bowl. Add the brown flour and mix gently.

      4 Rub in the soft margarine to crumb stage.

      5 Add the treacle, if using, and mix with a spatula or wooden spoon.

      6 Add