Rachel Allen - Recipes from My Mother

Ive always been fascinated by what makes people the way they are. We are like very complex, colourful tapestries, and as with every other living being, no two of us are exactly the same. We are all, of course, a product of two different people, but who we are as actual individuals goes deeper and is much more interesting than that. The place where we grew up, the climate, the cultures, the traditions and, not least, the food we eat all play a part in weaving together the fibres that make us who we are.

I grew up in Dublin with a sister, an Irish father and a mother from Iceland. Ive always been very proud of my half-Icelandic and half-Irish heritage. I count myself fortunate in that it was a very happy home with lots of good food. While my father made great brown bread and the best poached eggs in town, it was my mum who always cooked a delicious and nutritious meal for us all to eat at the end of the day. She had first one, then two, busy boutiques (while even whipping up the clothes for the shop herself on the sewing machine in the 1970s) and somehow there was always a great meal ready for us in the evening.

My favourites were the kinds of dishes that many people call comfort food roast chicken, stews and casseroles for which there is rarely a traditional Irish recipe as every family has their own. Despite only arriving in Dublin when she was 19, my mother seemed to quickly master the Irish flavours and cooking techniques. Recipes such as were a regular feature of my childhood. Looking back on it now, I am so appreciative of the fact that I got to sit down at the table to enjoy these meals with my family and catch up on what had happened during the day. Its the one thing that my husband, Isaac, and I insist on now with our children for me its one of the most important times of the day.

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Although my mother has lived in Dublin since marrying my father, she grew up in Iceland. Life in Reykjavik in the 1940s was, of course, very different from what it is now. Mum and her family lived close to the docks, which was where they would go to get their just-caught fish and also smoked fish, which was prepared as soon as it came in from the boats and was very popular because nobody had fridges. Being an island nation with not a huge amount of vegetation, fish featured a lot in their diet, much more so than meat, though if there was meat it was lamb. Even with a mainly fish diet, my mum remembers that children were all given cod liver oil in school every day as a supplement!

One of my favourite Icelandic foods that Mum often used to eat and we enjoyed on holidays in Iceland is harfiskurthe salted dried fish. I can still remember we used to eat it cold, spread with salted butter, as did Mum when she was young. Its still really popular there and although its more often eaten as a snack, it is sometimes heated in soups and stews. I tried to make it recently at home in County Cork, but it just didnt match up to the authentic Icelandic version, which is dried in the North Atlantic sea breeze. I guess Ill just have to wait for my next trip to Iceland until I have some more. Breakfast for my mum before she would skate across the Tjrnin lake in the middle of Reykjavik to get to school in wintertime was a bowl of sfyr, which is a bit like a Greek yoghurt, but is technically a cheese (as described on recipe from her, but my version, which is hopefully does justice to hers.