11 minute read
JANE HARDYINTERVIEW
Jane Hardy
is a feature writer who has interviewed a few of the big names from Arlene Foster to Mrs Thatcher.
REPORTING FROM THE HAMELY KITCHEN
Chef Paula M cIntyre discusses the food on her new show The Ham ely Kitchen, her discovery of the delights of Parm a ham and her m edia career w ith Jane Hardy.
Having rejected the Zoom-interview option with Paula McIntyre, chef and presenter of BBC NI’s series The Hamely Kitchen, we agree on the phone that it’s tedious having to get out the lipstick before appearing onscreen. “For me, getting ready to zoom simply means getting dressed.” says Paula with a laugh.
The concept behind her recent TV show is all about cultural identity and a kind of comfort cooking and eating. We chat about the way Polish supermarkets and African food shops cater for new Northern Irish citizens who miss the taste of home.
For Ms McIntyre (54) the concept partly means her Ulster-Scots tradition. So recipes like the traditional Queen of puddings – “Who doesn’t like that, with jam and meringue?” – or her tasty lamb stew with neeps. In fact, turnips feature quite a bit in the comforting cuisine that would most likely have been brought over when the Scots entered Ireland in the 1690s. “There’s one recipe I do, the turnip cake with butter and lovely bits of bacon and herbs that is traditional, but a wee bit different. I always try to get as much flavour as possible.” She riffs on a dish involving potato sliced on a Japanese tsumataro brushed with butter, sprinkled with smoked dulse and rolled up again. It’s then fried and baked and is crispy golden potato with the super layered texture of croissant.
Hamely is Ulster-Scots for homely and Paula McIntyre conveyed the mouth-watering joys of home cooking from a large well-equipped kitchen by the sea in Portstewart where she lives. Was it her kitchen, I ask? “No, it wasn’t my kitchen, I borrowed one, like everyone in TV. I live in a bungalow and my kitchen would have been too small for the camera crew although it’s perfectly good for me. I used to have a double oven but don’t now, although I do have a barbecue hut and a cabin for my hoard of gadgets.” This is one gadget-obsessed cook. Paula enthuses about a slightly frightening-
sounding Japanese slicer. “It does radishes really thin and I also use it for potatoes and apple.”
Ms McIntyre has a strict ethos when it comes to cookery on television. “I don’t like ake Off but I do like the Great ritish enu and Professional Masterchef, programmes about proper professional cooking like hef’s Table which is on Netflix.” She adds “I don’t like it when cookery fades into entertainment and comedy. For me, competitions should be restricted to sport. To be honest, I’m not keen on the competitive thing with food, it should be about sharing and enjoyment. It’s not good when you see people losing and having a wobble or crying.”
As she says, it is different for professionals. Although she relishes her lster Scots heritage, it was more exotic fare that lured young aula into the kitchen. She can remember the moment she discovered the joys of continental style shopping. “There was a seminal moment. I was brought up in oleraine and had friends from home, the Scott family, who moved to dinburgh. We visited and I remember at eight going to the alvona and rolla, a delicatessen there. arma ham was the first thing I discovered, and Parmesan. I thought this was sophisticated and delicious.”
Talking to Paula McIntyre for any length of time makes you feel hungry. Her awakening to the joys of Italian ingredients chimed with the home cooking she also liked. “My mum, Rae, did meatballs in an old e reuset pot with spaghetti. She was an adventurous cook for her time.”
“The first day I went to secondary school at eleven, they told us how to make tea and toast and I wasn’t impressed as I already had a range of ordon leu books. Say I wanted to make ballotine of duck, my mother allowed me. I was doing all the cooking and loved it.” Academically able and keen on history and nglish, aula might have been expected to follow the educational pathway of her parents. Her father Davy was a headmaster, her mother also a teacher.
She had a job persuading them she needed to follow her vocation into the kitchen. “I was expected to go down the academic route, so the idea of me cooking didn’t go down well.” Paula did her A-levels, and then went to a college of business studies and her placement was at Ramore restaurant, which had a ichelin red award. She learned butchering and other key skills from head chef George McAlpine.
The aspiring cook went to Mill Hill, ondon, for the summer. She remembers her mother forwarding the letter that contained a scholarship to a university in Rhode Island. Although, ironically given her T bias, cIntyre had secured a job at rue eith’s restaurant; she went to Rhode Island. “The rue eith job was what I wanted as it was one of the few ichelin starred restaurants run by a woman. But my mother said it would keep.”
In fact, cIntyre moved in a different direction. She loved her west coast existence and was one of six scholars. She had no family around and ended up doing a degree and she volunteered, helping out at open weekends and helping her chef lecturers with their catering businesses. aula cIntyre returned to ondon but didn’t enjoy working there at that point. She loves the city now, she says her favourite restaurants are Flor in Borough arket “they use seasonal vegetables and food from the market”) and Quo Vadis in Soho. She reveals she’s planning a “complete jolly” to the smoke very soon.
She was discovered by adio when participating in a cookery demonstration alongside some Ugandan chefs. “I was doing local food from home, eels with dulse, or seaweed, working with some women from Uganda. This radio producer recorded us, then I was asked to join The Food rogramme when I heard, I nearly put the car off the road.” Now aula cIntyre is a regular fixture on the influential food related show.
A supporter of the slow food movement, McIntyre occasionally indulges in relatively fast food in a busy week. Asked what she’d been eating recently, she says “ ast night it was noodles, sometimes it is a baked potato.”
Paula McIntyre’s working life has involved cooking for various programmes on Radio Ulster, writing a range of popular cookery books and appearing on radio and now T . She says modestly “I thought I was too old and maybe not thin enough for television, but the idea was suggested to me.” And it works beautifully. We note in conversation that top cooks like the Hairy ikers and the Two Fat adies, of fond memory, do not need to be stick thin or in their twenties to succeed.
McIntyre’s culinary style is authentic, comforting, flavourful. “I don’t faff about with low fat cr me fraiche, but use real ingredients like the left over cake baked in custard for the Queen of puddings. And I do love a nice apple sponge with ice cream and custard and a bit of cream.”
When lockdown struck, Paula McIntyre’s planned work dried up like an overcooked jam tart. ut she is resourceful and has been very busy. She doesn’t own a restaurant but did in the 1990s. “I got all that out of my system then and wasn’t so good at the business side. It’s tough to run a restaurant as a one-man- operation.”
This hristmas, like every year, aula cIntyre cooks dinner for her extended family her parents, brother and grown up niece and nephew. One year she tried the li abethan recipe in which you insert birds of different si es inside one another to roast. Without the swan option, of course. “It didn’t go down well, they asked me why I’d done it. So now it is just turkey.” eassuringly, cIntyre agrees Northern Ireland can feed itself in spite of concerns over rexit and our food supply chains.
Naturally, she adds the special cIntyre touch via herbs and sauces to the bird. As aula says, and at the risk of offending lackadder’s aldrick “It isn’t just about boiling a turnip.”
PAULA McINTYRE RECIPES:
GLAZED RUMP OF LAMB
• 4 x 200g lamb rumps • 1 tablespoon oil • 2 sprigs thyme • 2 sprigs rosemary • 1 clove garlic, smashed • 75g caster sugar • 25ml vinegar • 350ml lamb stock ( or alternatively beef or chicken stock)
Method
1. Set your oven to 200°c. 2. Score the fat on top of the rumps and rub with oil. Season with salt and place fat side down into a pan. Cook until the fat is goldenandcrispandadd ipover. dd the thyme, rosemary and garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Transfer to a roasting tin andcook or minutesandrest orfive minutes. 3. Cook the sugar in a pan to an amber caramel. Carefully add the vinegar and then the stock. Boil to a syrupy consistency. ddtherestedlamband strain in any of the resting juices. Coat the lamb with the stock. 4. Slice the lamb and serve with the sauce.
TURNIP CAKE WITH CRISPY BACON AND SAGE
• 1 large turnip • 250g melted butter • 25g potato starch • Salt and freshly ground black pepper to season
Method
1. Butter a 2lb loaf tin and line the bottom with parchment paper. 2. Quarter the turnip and peel. Slice each quarter as thinly as you can. 3. Brush the bottom of the tin with butter and place a layer of turnip on top. Brush with butter and sprinkle over some of the potato starch. Season with salt and pepper. Repeat until you get to the top. 4. Top with parchment paper and bake at 180oc for about an hour – test it by inserting a skewer. Cool and then weigh t he whole thing down with a couple of tins placed on their side. 5. Chill overnight. 6. Turn out the cake and cut into two and a half cm slices. Line a frying pan with parchment paper and place the turnip cake in the pan over medium high heat.
Cook until golden and cooked through.
• 4 slices dry cure streaky bacon • 16 sage leaves • 10g butter • 1 tablespoon oil • 2 tablespoons chopped chives
Method
1. Cook the bacon in a medium hot pan until crisp and golden and remove from pan. . ddthebutterandoiltothepanand cook the sage until crisp. 3. Drain on kitchen paper. 4. Top the turnip cake slices with the sage and bacon and some chopped chives.
TURNIP GRATIN
• 1 medium turnip • 4 rashers smoked streaky bacon onion,finelychopped • 1 tablespoon oil teaspoonfinelygratedorground nutmeg • 350ml double cream • 10g butter • 100g grated sharp cheddar • 35g breadcrumbs
Method
1. Set oven to 180°c. 2. Peel and coarsely grate the turnip. 3. Fry the bacon in a pan until golden and crisp and remove from pan. Chop. Cook the onion in the oil until soft and golden andaddthebaconandnutmeg. ddthe turnip and cook for three minutes then add the cream and bring to a simmer. 4. Butter a baking dish and spoon in the turnip mixture. Scatter over the cheese and breadcrumbs and bake for 25 minutes or until golden on top and bubbling.
Check out another recipe of Paula’s in our Good Food Guide on pg 106.
Vincent, Alice and Hannah Heffron.
Mayoress and mayor Pat and Cllr Billy Webb help Diarmuid Gavin launch the 2022 Garden Show Ireland.
GARDEN SHOW IRELAND
Garden Show Ireland returns to its stunning setting in Antrim Castle Gardens in 2022. The 2022 Show was launched on Saturday 4th September 2021 by BBC celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin at One Giant Picnic.
Garden Show Ireland 2022 dates: 29 April - 1 May 2022
. Karen and Steve Weekes and children
Charlie, TJ., and Lucy.
. Sandra and Billy Swanson celebrating
their anniversary.
. Ivan Nesbitt and Sandy Cuthbert
with Diarmuid Gavin.
. Mayoress and mayor Pat and Cllr Billy
Webb with garden visitors Hannah and Grace.
Sophie Caesar as Elsa, Lauren Fittis as Tinkerbell and Olivia Moreland as Ariel from Enchanted princess Parties. Friends of Antrim Castle Gardens are Sarah Beatty, Anne McAuley, Diane Greenwood, Ann Murray and Marie Bradley.
. Diarmuid Gavin at the Garden
Show Q&A showcase.
.From NI Opera are Daryl Simpson, Sean Rooney,
