Endless stews!

Food nostalgia usually comes wrapped in warmth, comfort and the smell of something lovely drifting from the kitchen.

Mine is more a story of childhood trauma and comes with the lingering memory of overboiled meat and the faint whiff of stock cubes that could clear a room. Growing up in Berlin, my mum was not one for cooking. Fair play to her, she kept us fed but flair was never part of the plan.

Convenience ruled the kitchen and that meant stews. Endless stews. Made with salty stock cubes and whatever cut of meat was cheapest and, often, fattiest. Everything went into the pot and stayed there for an extra hour ‘just to be sure’.

When she cooked a roast or some chops, she kept the ‘one hour longer’ rule and you could nearly have resoled your runners with the results. To this day, the sight or smell of boiled meat turns my stomach. It brings me straight back to a kitchen filled with steam and dread (no one ever asked me what I would like for dinner). And then there was tripe. Yes, tripe.

At a time when most people in Germany considered it closer to dog food than dinner, it was a regular guest at our table. The smell alone was enough to make you gag. Even now, after 26 years living in Cork, I still find myself almost running past the tripe stall in the English Market, as if it might somehow reach out and follow me home.

Vegetables didn’t fare much better. Cauliflower was cooked into submission until it resembled porridge and smelled of old socks. Peas came in jars or tins, part of the exciting new wave of convenience food, though ‘exciting’ might be stretching it. They were soft, greyish and oddly sweet in the wrong way. Thank God for frozen peas, the miracle of modern life. There were, however, rare moments of brilliance.

My mum’s rice pudding was something else entirely. Creamy, comforting and always topped with a generous sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon, it remains one of the nicest things I’ve ever eaten. She also had a curious creation known as milk pasta, essentially rice pudding made with leftover pasta. It sounds questionable, but it really worked.

As convenience food took hold, new culinary wonders appeared. Packaged ‘meals’ of spaghetti with tomato sauce in a pouch and ready grated parmesan (old socks but somehow worse than the cauliflower) and a shake of dried herbs, felt like a step into sophistication. It was one of the first dishes I made for myself, along with fish fingers, mashed potatoes and, for reasons I still can’t explain, cucumber salad. Speaking of mashed potatoes, who could forget Smash? That peculiar invention of dried potato flakes transformed with boiling water into something that claimed to be mash. I still shudder at the memory.

Thankfully, my grandmother intervened early and showed me how to make proper mashed potatoes, with butter, milk (on special days even with cream) and a bit of care. A skill that has stood the test of time. Looking back, it’s easy to laugh. Those meals shaped my tastes in ways I only understand now.

They taught me what I don’t like but also made me appreciate good food more. And while I may never come around to tripe or overboiled stew, I’d give anything for one more bowl of my mum’s rice pudding.

Disclaimer: My dad loved my mum’s cooking, and she was famous for her stews on my dad’s side of the family.